The leader of the provincial opposition says opening five new emergency units wouldn’t solve the overcapacity problem in Saskatoon hospitals.

Ryan Meili says internal documents from the Saskatchewan Health Authority asked for urgent action to deal with an extreme overcapacity crisis with one indicating as of Saturday there were 150 patients in areas where they shouldn’t be at Royal University and St. Paul’s Hospitals.

Meili feels the new emergency unit at RUH opened in conjunction with the Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital didn’t add a great deal of capacity despite having more space.

However, the leader of the Saskatchewan NDP insists the problem lies with a lack of investment in home and long-term care with not enough attention being paid to areas like primary care and addictions.

Meili believes the situation is stressful for staff as well as patients and goes beyond Saskatoon.

He claims an emergency room nurse in Regina said that facility is recycling staff faster than bottles at Sarcan.

Meili repeated his party’s call for a full review of what they describe as “hallway medicine”.

(CJWW)