Gov’t denies Meili claim that COVID ICU patients being moved out of province

Has Saskatchewan already started moving COVID-19 patients outside of the province?

NDP Leader Ryan Meili believes it is.

During a Thursday press conference responding to Premier Scott Moe’s Thursday morning announcement, Meili noted COVID patients in Saskatchewan’s ICUs had been moved out of province.

He didn’t have the exact number of patients but cited his sources.

“I’m just hearing directly from physicians working within the hospital that that’s happening,” Meili said.

In a follow-up inquiry, the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) stated it hasn’t transferred any patients out of province “due to overcapacity due to COVID.”

“The SHA does transfer patients out of province for other reasons, including specialized clinical services not available in Saskatchewan. These have continued during the pandemic,” the statement reads.

Moe’s announcement, along with the activation of the Provincial Command through the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency’s Provincial Emergency Operations Centre, left Meili with a few questions of his own.

“The shift to the command centre — we don’t know exactly what the purpose of that is. Why that would make a real difference if they’re not going to make the changes that are necessary in their practice?” he said.

“They just announced someone else was going to be managing the same lack of action. It’s not exactly striking confidence.”

Saskatchewan isn’t the lone province with a command centre for critical COVID care.

Ontario has its “Critical Care COVID-19 Command Centre,” which gives regional hubs the opportunity to accept or decline COVID critical care patients to hospitals in the region, control supplies, trigger telemedicine help and make the final decision on access to critical care beds for programs outside of COVID-19.

Ontario’s command centre can also monitor critical care capacity in real-time, and move issues found for critical care decision-making, which includes crossing “regional lines.”

When asked if something similar would be coming for Saskatchewan in its command centre, the SPSA said the enhancement of the Provincial Emergency Operations Centre makes the move to a unified command with multiple authorities.

“The SPSA regularly works with all levels of government as well as the federal and provincial governments on responses and resource agreements, experience that will be used as part of the provincial response,” an emailed statement from the SPSA stated. 

“The enhancement of the PEOC is intended to provide the right resources at the right time so that health-care workers are better positioned to serve the needs of their patients.”

During Moe’s press conference Thursday morning, he said the change will provide administrative and organizational support so that health-care workers can focus on providing health care instead of organizing vaccine clinics and testing efforts.

Regardless, Meili wasn’t happy with Moe’s announcement.

“I hope that this works, but there’s nothing in today’s announcement that makes me think Scott Moe has figured this out,” he said.

— With files from 980 CJME’s Lisa Schick