The emergency department at Regina’s Pasqua Hospital is staying open around the clock. The health region had announced that the ED would be closed as of last Thursday during the overnight hours due to a persistent and serious shortage of resuscitation-capable physicians. However, a last-minute deal was reached in which physicians agreed to work extra shifts until locums are found to fill in.
With emergency physicians in demand across the country, recruitment has been a challenge for the province but the following day the government and Saskatchewan Medical Association announced a new three-year contract with emergency physicians which will see them getting a pay hike of around 13 per cent in the first year and additional increases in the subsequent two years.
They will earn between $320,000 and $400,000 a year which Premier Brad Wall says is comparable to what is paid in Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario.
The agreement also expedites the hand-off of ED patients to specialists so that emergency physicians have more time for trauma care. Previously they were responsible for patients they had seen until a specialist took over or they had been admitted to a hospital bed.
But this is not the end of the emergency service issue in Saskatchewan. Saskatoon, which has three hospitals to Regina’s two, received some criticism from Provincial Auditor Judy Ferguson in a report this week. She said the hospitals are falling short of national wait-time standards in emergency care, and is in fact not measuring wait times accurately. She said authorities need to start the clock from when patients arrive at the ED not when they see a doctor. The government has promised to eliminate all ED waits by 2017.
The auditor’s report can be found at http://auditor.sk.ca/publications/public-reports/item?id=128. (Health Edition, December 6, 2013).
