'On a wing and a prayer': Kamsack raises concerns over lack of emergency beds

Services at the Kamsack Hospital haven’t been operating at full capacity, for almost a year now, worrying some within the community.

The temporary service cuts were originally announced in March 2021, with promises to reopen all emergency beds within the facility, something that’s yet to happen.

“We hear rumblings from the staff there everybody's afraid for their jobs. They're afraid of the closures. It's like something's in the wind, even our physicians say that,” said Denise Wishnevetski-Grozik, a team lead at the Assiniboine Valley Medical Centre.

“It's very difficult for the doctors, we've heard all kinds of situations from them where they've had patients that needed to be admitted. Sent them home, on a wing and a prayer because what else could they do?”

The emergency beds total five currently at the hospital, a total that hasn’t changed in quite some time.

The five beds equal out to be one per doctor in the community, along with a bed dedicated to an addictions program. The community will be losing two of its four doctors by Canada Day, something which is concerning to the community, as it neighbours Duck Mountain Provincial Park.

The Assiniboine Valley Health and Wellness Foundation is a partial funder and confirmed it has turned to the province for help.

Not only due to the lack of emergency beds, but also due to a staff shortage within its labs and hospital due to early retirements and workers quitting because of stress.

The foundation said so far it hasn’t received an indication as to when operations will return to normal, but a committee plans to sit down with Minister Everett Hindley later this week.

For now, health care workers worry about the impacts within the community.

“If we don't have lab services, we can't have heart patients, fractures things be seen in there. So how do we recruit physicians to a situation like that,” said Wishnevetski-Grozik.

CTV News reached out to the Saskatchewan Health Authority, along with the Ministry of Health Wednesday, but didn’t receive a response by the time this article was published.