Saskatchewan’s health minister has rejected accusations from a nurses union and the Opposition NDP that some babies from Regina’s neonatal intensive care unit were sent to North Dakota for care.
“No child has had to be moved out of the province for capacity issues,” Jeremy Cockrill told reporters Tuesday.
“No patient has been moved out of the country for capacity issues since 2008.”
The Saskatchewan Union of Nurses said this week the neonatal intensive care unit at the Regina General Hospital is overcapacity, short-staffed and running out of ventilators.
Union president Tracy Zambory told Global News that the situation has led to families being sent to North Dakota, but did not offer specifics.
Cockrill said he has not spoken with Zambory but plans to reach out to see if he’s unaware of a specific case.
“We work very hard to provide the highest level of care right here in the province,” he said.
“To spread fear, to sow fear among expectant mothers that they’re going to have to go to North Dakota because of capacity issues … it’s irresponsible.”
The union did not provide a comment Tuesday.
The Opposition NDP also raised the allegation in a news conference earlier in the day.
“If I laboured through birth here in Regina and then I was told my baby is not well and you have to go to North Dakota, that’s an F for the Sask. Party, that’s a failing grade,” rural health critic Meara Conway, who is pregnant, had said.
She later told reporters she doesn’t regret bringing up the claim.
“(Media) is one of the main ways that we get access to information, especially under this government,” Conway said. “(The province) is exceptionally untransparent, especially when it comes to many of the challenges that we’re seeing in our health-care system.”
Conway said there are still issues at the intensive care unit that require scrutiny, including the 44 complaints lodged this year about staff shortages and a low supply of ventilators.
“(The minister) needs to put himself in the position of these expectant mothers, these families and these front-line health-care workers and address this crisis, instead of pointing fingers,” she said.
Cockrill said overcapacity in the unit is a result of a surge in births and that the hospital is not low on ventilators.
He said the province has brought in extra staff to support the unit and that there is capacity in other Saskatchewan hospitals.
The NDP had introduced an emergency motion urging the province to address the crisis in the intensive care unit, but it was rejected by government members.
Saskatchewan has also been sending breast care patients to a private clinic in Calgary because of a lack of capacity. Cockrill has said the province is working to no longer send patients to Alberta’s largest city but will continue to review its contract with the company, which ends next year.
Conway questioned the costs of sending patients out of province.
“It’s part of a trend of not building our health-care system here at home,” she said.
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