The recent postponements of elective surgeries at the Pasqua Hospital in Regina due to a breakdown in the sterilization of operating room tools illustrates just how fragile and shallow our health care system is in southern Saskatchewan.
We use this Regina situation as an example since it has become abundantly clear that our provincial medical community is insisting on maintaining just two centres in which to clear off our more complex surgical needs. With that situation well established, Regina becomes the focal point for all of the potential surgical customers in the southern half of the province who require slightly more complex surgical services.
That means two hospitals are required to carry the brunt of that load and when one of them goes down, even temporarily, well, as we noted at the beginning, it illustrates the shallowness and fragility.
Naturally, the argument can be raised from the other side that it would be foolish and inefficient to overbuild a system for a "just in case" situation and we agree that this, too, would be wasting taxpayer funds.
But when you have to rely on just two ancient hospitals to serve the needs of more than 500,000 potential customers, you're pulling a pretty weak bow.
When we hear of surgical patients having to get shipped north to Saskatoon or Edmonton or east to Winnipeg or even, Winkler to get the emergent and urgent surgeries completed, you know we are dancing on a pretty thin, grey line.
Just a couple of months ago, before the sterilization miscues, the Pasqua was in danger of closing down emergency care and surgeries due to the lack of emergency room doctors. More money was found to pay them and eureka, almost overnight, more were found! So we learned quickly that money still talks with the loudest voice in that community.
So there needs to be some alternative flexibilities engaged in our tiny little medical system here in Saskatchewan, or else we will continue to be plagued with these frustrating stalls and stops.
When the Pasqua's operating flow was first shut down and then re-opened on a "make-do" level, we understand 163 patients had been prevented from having their scheduled surgeries as originally scheduled. There went the wait time target and there went more of the Regina Qu'Appelle Health Region's budget since the problem just didn't want to go away.
An industrial hygienist from Vancouver was flown in. A team of chemical engineers were consulted, environmental services personnel were brought into the fray as was the Saskatchewan Research Council and some disease control laboratory experts. We don't expect many of them provided their expertise for free.
We also don't know how this latest breakdown in flow plays out in this government's current obsession with Lean Japanese-based car manufacturing-styled flow of components and servants, but we can guess it sort of threw a monkey wrench into that master plan, at least for the next 12 months.
We can now only hope that the Pasqua's major problems are behind them for awhile and that Regina General won't be the next to stumble and that southern Saskatchewan's client base will get back to having their surgical procedures performed in Regina or Saskatoon or Edmonton or Winkler or Winnipeg or Minot.
