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On Monday, the Saskatchewan NDP said it’s an “abject failure” that the Regina Urgent Care Centre is not yet open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
When the centre was first announced, it was promised as a 24-7 facility. When it opened last summer, the plan was to expand the hours in the fall once the facility was fully staffed, but that hasn’t happened.
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The centre is currently open from 8 a.m. until 9:30 p.m., seven days a week.
Last week, the Saskatchewan Health Authority told 980 CJME it had no timeline for when the centre would expand its hours to operate 24 hours a day.
“We have plans to operate it for the hours that we are open currently,” explained Sheila Anderson, the health authority’s vice-president of integrated Regina health.
“(We’re) always looking for opportunities if there is a need in the future to be open 24 hours.”
Keith Jorgenson, associate health critic for the Saskatchewan NDP, said this is an example of broken promises and poor planning on the part of the provincial government.
“This is a fairly simple promise that they made and you would think that, being that this is the first urgent care centre that they’re opening, that they would have all hands on deck to make sure that it’s operating appropriately, and they can’t even keep that one facility staffed on weekends and the evenings,” said Jorgenson.
Jorgenson pointed out that the government has additional urgent care centres planned for different cities around the province, but he questioned how those centres will be staffed if the facility in Regina can’t find enough health-care workers to meet its needs.
The facility has had to reduce its hours twice this summer. On Sunday, the health authority said it was because of a lack of doctors.
Jorgenson called the health authority’s claims that the Regina facility is fully staffed and is meeting the current need bizarre, saying the organization lacks empathy and the ability to acknowledge problems as they exist.
“(It) really makes me wonder if they have any real plan to fix things, because it’s hard to fix a problem that you don’t think exists,” said Jorgenson.
Jorgenson said the system needs more money and more training for workers, but said it’s not a problem the province can recruit itself out of. He said the provincial government has a horrible track record of retaining and communicating with employees, saying the Regina Urgent Care Centre is just one example of a health-care system that’s failing people in the province.
Urgent care centres offer help for those with urgent medical needs that are not considered emergencies. The goal is to help those who can’t access their primary care provider on short notice, while avoiding emergency department visits.
The Health Minister didn’t provide a response to questions around the urgent care centre. The SHA, instead, sent a statement saying the Regina centre had seen 41,000 patients in its first year, that patient volumes are aligning closely with the original projections for 24-hour care, and that the centre is “functioning as intended.”
