Changes in population in key communities mean that changes are made in long-term (10 year) planning for the Sun Country Health Region.
John Knoch, vice-president of finance and corporate services for the health region, said this type of planning allows capital projects to emerge where they are most urgent. It also gives administration an ongoing look at the various resources at every site, since the plans now include square footage information about each facility in the region.
Knoch spoke about the long-range planning during a special meeting of the board of directors on July 19. The board had assembled ostensibly to approve the 2016-17 budget. The directors, however, also received a number of reports including those from Knoch and Sun Country’s CEO Marga Cugnet.
“So when we make changes or start planning for renovations, we’ll have knowledge about the sites and their systems,” said Knoch, referring to the updated plans. “That way we can align projects with initiatives, and we’ll get a cost assessment based on the square metres to identify efficiencies.”
In the more immediate future, Knoch and Cugnet noted that plans for a new Weyburn General Hospital remain high on the priority list as does the community health services and maintenance building (one facility).
A new Estevan Regional Nursing Home is also near the top of the list, but Knoch said, “there is no planning chart for it yet, and we do have planning done for the Weyburn General Hospital.”
The Weyburn Special Care Home is also on the long-term planning schedule followed by such items as a Phase 2 project for the new Kipling Hospital and also the Lampman Health Centre.
“We don’t get to any estimate stage though until construction appears to be more likely,” he explained.
Cugnet reported there were 497 patient safety incidents in Sun Country in March and April, which was a four per cent decrease from the previous reporting period. The most commonly reported incidents were falls which represented 44 per cent of the incidents while medication errors (83) represented 17 per cent of the incidents, and there were 64 events involving aggressive or abusive behaviour.
Ten per cent of the incidents (49) ended up as being near misses or “good catches” meaning that factors that could have led to a more serious event, were identified quickly and rectified before harm was done.
The report also noted that 50 births were recorded at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Estevan during March and April of this year. The medium number of births in the hospital since January of this year, is 25 per month.
Board members also approved two applications from trust committees for facility improvements. The Galloway Health Centre Trust in Oxbow was given the green light to spend $38,650 for upgrades and additional materials, and the Mainprize Manor and Health Centre Trust (Midale) received approval from the board to spend a little over $34,000 on their centre.
