Paramedics in Saskatchewan are being taken away from responding to emergency calls, to wait with patients for an available hospital bed.
On Thursday, a leaked image from the Saskatchewan Health Authority showed four hospitals in the province were all on bypass — a status that indicates a hospital is so full it can’t take on any more patients.
When a hospital bed isn’t available for a patient arriving via ambulance, who isn’t in a critical condition, paramedics must either redirect the patient to an available facility or wait with the patient.
On average, a Saskatchewan paramedic waits three hours to transfer a patient to a hospital bed — according to Steven Skoworodko, president of the Paramedic Services Chiefs of Saskatchewan.
“We’re waiting with patients on their stretchers until there's availability to move them in,” Skoworodko, who has been a paramedic for 28 years, told CTV News.
“It means they’re unable to respond to emergency calls because they're tied up at the hospital.”
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Taking a paramedic crew away from emergency calls, to wait at a hospital, is especially significant for rural communities — where there aren’t many paramedics to begin with.
“If you look at a crew from La Ronge, for example, come down to Saskatoon — that’s four hours one way and four hours back,” Skoworodko.
“Then, if they have an eight-hour offload delay. It puts paramedics in a bad position.”
Fewer paramedics puts firefighters in a bad position too.
Saskatoon Fire Chief Morgan Hackl said when an ambulance is tied up at the hospital, it has a trickle-down effect on the fire department.
“We do have a wait-time on scene, at medical calls, where there's no ambulance available. Some of those medical calls are serious at times, so it is a concern,” Hackl said.
“Sometimes waiting for an ambulance is five minutes and then sometimes it's hours.”
Saskatchewan Health Minister Paul Merriman said, “patient flow within a hospital is a challenge right now.”
He said the province is considering expanding hospital staff’s scope of responsibilities to be more efficient.
“Like, nurse practitioners would be able to discharge individuals. We're looking at maximizing our system so if somebody does come into our healthcare system they receive the treatment in a timely manner, and then they're discharged in a timely manner so they can get back to their lives,” Merriman said.
