Sask. NDP say promise of 24-hour urgent care centre has been ‘broken’

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The NDP is taking aim at the province’s rollout of Regina’s new Urgent Care Centre (UCC), calling a delay in expanding to 24-hour services a broken promise of the re-elected Saskatchewan Party.

Opposition shadow minister for rural and remote health Meara Conway said the ambiguity on the UCC’s expansion of hours is “the same old Sask. Party playbook.”

“Like many residents of this city, I’m very disappointed but not surprised that the Sask. Party can’t get this facility fully staffed up,” she said during a news conference in front of the facility Monday. “They say one thing before the election and then do another.”

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The UCC was announced in 2022 as a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week facility meant to ease pressure on Regina’s emergency rooms by taking on non-emergent patients.

A grand opening at the $10-million facility was delayed from April to July earlier this year. When it opened, it was with reduced hours than originally outlined. At that time, the fall was set as a new target to expand to 24 hours once the facility was fully staffed.

As of mid-November, the UCC’s hours remain 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. daily. There is still no set date to make the switch to 24 hours, the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) said in an email statement earlier this week.

Both the health authority and the Ministry of Health are “currently assessing the first few months of Urgent Care Centre operations,” the statement said. “This will establish a better understanding of the UCC on overall system capacity and support future planning for necessary physician coverage and staffing levels to meet patient volumes.”

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The SHA confirmed that ongoing attempts to recruit unfilled positions within the facility continue, alongside the assessment to determine any future changes to hours.

According to job postings available online, the health authority is still seeking to fill two nurse practitioner and 12 doctor vacancies at the UCC, plus two administrative roles.

Since it opened, provincial officials have said the UCC is a focus within the province’s Health Human Resources (HHR) recruitment plan, in addition to emergency rooms in Saskatoon and Regina and rural regional hospitals.

At a campaign event in Saskatoon at the start of October, Premier Scott Moe touted the urgent care centres in both Regina and Saskatoon as innovative efforts made to improve health-care availability by his government.

Conway argued that the recruitment plan does not address the issue of retention. She also noted that emergency rooms continue to face significant backlogs as Saskatchewan ranks at the bottom, nationally, when it comes to surgical wait times and health-worker retention.

“This government isn’t listening to health-care workers and is driving them out of the province in droves. The data backs that up,” Conway said, referencing reports published this spring by the Canadian Institute of Health Information and University of Regina researchers.

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Both reports found Saskatchewan experienced a significant decline in the number of nurses and doctors working in the province since 2019 — five per cent overall and as high as 21 per cent in rural areas.

Use of Regina’s urgent care facility has continued on an upward trend in its first four months of operation, said the SHA. Since opening, more than 15,500 patients have been treated at the facility.

The SHA estimates an average of 114 patients are seen per day, up from the average of 107 patients per day tracked in the first six weeks of service.

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