Saskatoon Health Region forced to delay some surgeries

Two hospitals in Saskatoon are so full that health region officials have embarked on a 14-day review of their patient processing system, an initiative that includes — for one week — postponing non-emergency surgeries at Royal University Hospital and St. Paul's Hospital. The move does not affect surgeries related to cancer treatment.

"This is a time to take everything we've learned, every great idea that we've been thinking about — and some of them have been in the works for months, some for weeks, some for years — and giving permission for the organization for those that work here, every day, to try new things," Dan Florizone, president of the Saskatoon Health Region, said Wednesday.

Right now, Saskatoon's hospitals are 85 patients overcapacity. That means people are receiving treatment in hallways, emergency rooms and space not meant to hold patients.

"I encountered staff groups that really said, 'We're overworked, we're over capacity, this situation cannot carry on,' and they were deeply concerned that this has become the new status quo, the new normal," Florizone added.

He said all employees of the health region are being asked to come up with solutions for the crowded conditions. 

Among the issues to be examined are how patients end up in Saskatoon's hospitals from other locations. As well, the region will look at alternatives for the care of elderly patients.

"Patients that come from a long-term care facility into the hospital, into our emergency department, 50 per cent of the admissions that result from those visits could be handled safely and appropriately within the long term care facility," Florizone noted.

While the health region has successfully dealt with overcrowding in the past, Florizone said he wants to see more fundamental changes.

"Our difficulty is three months later, they're full again," Florizone said, referring to short-term solutions. "We're doing something completely different here. We're looking across the whole of the care continuum. It's about rapid response, it's about putting home-based services in place, it's about providing care where people are at."

Florizone also apologized for postponing surgeries on short notice.

"It's totally unacceptable to have cancellations," he said. "That's not what I consider to be the inspired change we're talking about [and] I took the decision to create some immediate capacity."

The region pointed to the program called Lean as a tool that "has been used in different areas of health care to improve how we provide services."

"This is the first time a project of this magnitude has been undertaken to bring all of those pieces of improvement work and data together to affect a system-wide change," Florizone said. "The results of this initiative will be applied to all Saskatoon Health Region facilities."

On Wednesday night, a health region official said many people were contacting the region expressing concern and some confusion about whether or not their scheduled procedures were affected.

The official said all those whose surgeries were affected by Florizone's move have been contacted.