SHA CEO confirms increase in respiratory illnesses affecting ERs across Sask.

One day after the latest provincial Community Respiratory Illness Surveillance Program report showed an explosion of influenza cases across the province over the last two weeks, the CEO of the Saskatchewan Health Authority says he’s seeing that reflected in emergency departments.

Andrew Will said he’s proud of how staff are all stepping up to improve flow in ERs, and to serve patients in a timely way.

“We’re definitely seeing increased volumes in our emergency room departments, given the high level of respiratory illnesses we’re seeing in the province,” he said Friday. “(We’re) really proud of our teams working in those departments to provide care to patients.”

Saskatchewan Health Authority CEO Andrew Will. (Lara Fominoff/650 CKOM)

Will said patients are always triaged according to need, but he’s asking those who can to use the 811 HealthLine as much as possible.

“(We) recently implemented a virtual physician triage program through our 811 service as well so that patients can actually access a physician through that service and hopefully avoid unnecessary visits to the emergency room,” he explained.

Will couldn’t say what the average wait times were in any given emergency department, but volunteered that over the last 2 1/2 months, the SHA has improved ambulance/EMS offload delays by 60 per cent at Saskatoon’s Royal University Hospital and by 40 per cent at St. Paul’s Hospital in Saskatoon.

He also didn’t say whether any surgeries were being delayed at this point because of the influx of patients to emergency rooms and the staff required to deal with that.

“I think the biggest challenges we have in our efforts to do as many surgeries as possible would be at times when our staff or our surgeons or our anesthetists are ill with COVID or other illnesses. We’re seeing higher rates of unplanned absences than we normally have,” said Will.

At times, he said patients scheduled for surgeries are also testing positive for COVID, so the SHA is doing its best to make sure it doesn’t lose opportunities to do as many surgeries as possible.