Sask. doctors, NDP express concerns about COVID hospitalization under-count

Late last month, the Saskatchewan government announced that COVID-19 hospitalizations in the province had been under-counted and that reports would be updated to align with national definitions. 

Under the previous standard the province was using, patients were no longer being counted in the hospitalization numbers once they were no longer infectious, even if they were still in hospital experiencing COVID-19 complications. 

In a statement on Dec. 24, the Ministry of Health said it was reviewing how these cases are reported in other Canadian jurisdictions.

According to Dr. Dennis Kendel, a physician and health policy consultant in Saskatoon, this practice was not only out of step with the rest of the country, but with normal methods of medical record-keeping and reporting. 

"It seems different than the way we deal with other conditions," he said. "If you were admitted to the hospital and continued to need treatment … your admitting diagnosis generally would remain the same. This was surprising to me."

Former Saskatchewan deputy medical health officer Dr. Anne Huang has also said she is "curious as to what the rationale is" for the under-reporting. She said she is concerned about how this has affected our understanding of the limitations on acute care beds and staff in Saskatchewan, given that we have known for some time that some COVID patients take a long time to recover.

"That means they are admitted for a disproportionately longer period of time than other community-acquired pneumonia patients," she said.

"So if we are not counting them as COVID-19 hospitalizations, that means we actually lose track of the COVID-19-associated health-care utilization."

Kendel also said this under-counting may have given an overly sunny impression of the strain COVID-19 is placing on the health-care system.

"My principal concern is that we were perhaps conveying a misleading public impression that things weren't as bad as they really were," he said. "That's worrisome, because I do think awareness of possible hospital overload is one of the factors that motivates people to comply with the public health orders." 

Saskatchewan NDP Leader Ryan Meili said accurate reporting of hospitalization numbers would be one of the most reliable measures of how the pandemic is trending in Saskatchewan. 

"The testing numbers matter, but they're pretty variable based on how many people are actually going and getting tested," he said. "But people getting sick and turning up at the hospital is probably the clearer measure of how things are going."

And according to Meili, the under-reporting speaks to wider issues with how the pandemic has been handled.

"Unfortunately, this has been a bit of a pattern with Scott Moe throughout the pandemic, trying to downplay the impact in Saskatchewan every chance he gets," Meili said.

"[And] when you under-report that, it means you're downplaying the risk, you're downplaying reality and you might even be giving people the message that things are not as risky out there as they really are."