Health Authority works to resume in-person visits at long-term care facilities

Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) CEO Scott Livingstone admits he’s been getting some heat when it comes to rural hospitals being repurposed and families who are frustrated over not being able to visit loved ones in person during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He told Gormley they are working on some phased-in plans to see how they could potentially open up ‘normal’ visits for people with family members in long-term care. Livingstone says that could only happen if they can ensure they aren’t putting anyone at significant risk.

“Not being able to see their loved ones directly and know that the window visits just aren’t enough, and it’s not something we think can be maintained long term,” said Livingstone. “We have a group of patient and family advisors working with us to help direct that strategy.”

Livingstone says they would have to take that strategy to the chief medical health officer, because it would require a change to the public health order.

“To ensure that we can safely open up a little bit at a time, to ensure that we’re keeping residents safe, but at the same time not being as restrictive in both our acute care and in our long-term care visiting,” said Livingstone.

Rural hospitals

Since the SHA launched its strategy in early April of re-purposing 12 smaller rural hospitals in the province to deal with the pandemic, it has received complaints from people living near those facilities.

Livingstone said the conversion of 12 hospitals was done to support bed capacity.

“I would describe the 12 facilities as creating 12 COVID free facilities and part of the challenge and change that we’ve required is to build capacity to support alternative level care patients in these communities,” he said.

As a result of the transformation, these hospitals shut down their emergency departments. That has been a concern for many in those communities, especially with seeding underway.

“It’s important for people to know that if a single COVID positive patient walks into a facility with high risk individuals and we don’t know they’re COVID positive, it could have a very dramatic and horrific effect on those individuals where we see 82 per cent of deaths from COVID nationally are in long-term residents,” said Livingstone. “If someone came into an emergency department with a valid emergency regardless of what it was, they still could be COVID infected and how do we handle those patients in those facilities?”

Livingstone adds that these hospitals were not chosen randomly.

“It was at where other facilities are located, what the EMS response is, how we can deal with the day-to-day needs of these individuals through these temporary changes of the facility, whether that’s through our first responders, our EMS, as well as services that are available to them in other hospitals where we have these services located throughout the province,” said Livingstone.

Field hospitals

Livingstone says with the virus still here, field hospitals are still being set up to deal with any potential capacity issues. Merlis Belsher Place in Saskatoon and Evraz Place in Regina are being equipped, but Livingstone says the size and scope of the field hospitals has been reduced.

“We need to ensure that we have a capacity across the system to deal with anything that happens – both a COVID surge or considerable bed capacity issues associated with other things —not just the reopening of the system, but if we have a northern fire and there’s a bunch of people who need to be evacuated and have health concerns we need to be able to support them, so both field hospitals are still under construction,” said Livingstone.