Nurses union says Sask. health care is ‘burnt nearly to the ground’

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Saskatchewan health-care workers and a union representing some 10,000 nurses are worried that the province’s health-care system is approaching a cliff.

The Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN) — representing registered nurses, nurse practitioners and registered psychiatric nurses — established an email address for members this week so they could send in complaints and concerns.

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In the midst of it all, St. Paul’s Hospital emergency room in Saskatoon admitted 41 patients with no beds available for them.

One email sent in this week, which was shared with the Leader-Post, took issue with the continued rocky rollout of the Administrative Information Management System (AIMS). The program was designed to administer payroll, human resources, supply management and procurement.

“(AIMS) has created a shortage so significant the cardiac unit in Regina has not been able to accept patients at times due to running out of batteries to run the cardiac monitors,” read the email sent to SUN.

Another nurse working in a neonatal intensive care unit said their department “runs out of formula all the time and we have to find an alternate that’s a close alternative. We have run out of PICC lines … feeding syringes.”

“It seems every week we are out of something new and compromising alternatives in place — or trying to work without,” the nurse added.

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Employees have also continued to mention issues regarding payments, with SUN reporting some workers have been faced with mounting fees on missed mortgage payments.

“It’s really important that people receive the pay that they’ve earned and we know how important that is to our staff,” Saskatchewan Health Authority CEO Andrew Will said Friday at a news conference in Saskatoon.

He explained that the SHA processes 50,000 pay slips every two weeks and so far there has been about a one-per-cent error rate across the SHA. He said the current error rate is in line with the past payment system.

“There’s certainly an adjustment period,” continued Will, who offered a “huge thank you to all of our staff, physicians, patients” as the program rolls out.

When it comes to supplies, Will said there have been impacts.

“We know that some of our vendors that provide supplies to the Saskatchewan Health Authority have had their own challenges in terms of interruptions,” said Will, who added that “it’s really unacceptable any time our frontline care providers might not have the supplies they need to care for patients.”

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On Friday morning, SUN president Tracy Zambory said worsening conditions in Saskatchewan hospitals can be attributed, in part, to the software.

“AIMS is an incredibly expensive mistake,” she said. “We’re looking at $300 million, if not more, wasted on a system that is an absolute abysmal failure.”

Back in 2023, the provincial auditor recommended that the SHA do a “lessons learned report” for AIMS given delays and a budget that ballooned from $86 million to $240 million.

Overall, Zambory says current health-care conditions have deteriorated to the point where many nurses have voiced concerns over the safety and efficacy of their work.

“The public should be very concerned having to go into an emergency room in this province,” said Zambory, who added that AIMS has also made it difficult to find and share job postings.

“The health-care system in Saskatchewan is burnt nearly to the ground.”

Regarding the situation at St. Paul’s Hospital, the SHA said in an emailed statement earlier this week that it acknowledged “volume and acuity pressures in our emergency departments and inpatient wards in Saskatoon” while pointing to “ongoing work” to implement a capacity pressure action plan.

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With respect to those plans, Zambory said “they have not worked.”

“There’s a message being delivered by the government and by the Ministry of Health that we’re on track, but we couldn’t be any further off track.”

Through the current tumult in Saskatchewan, members of the government are looking west for possible solutions.

In Alberta earlier this week, it was announced the province plans to remove Alberta Health Services (AHS) as the operator of some hospitals, transferring control to religious health-care providers.

“That is the slipperiest slope I’ve ever heard of,” Zambory said when asked about the prospect of that happening in Saskatchewan. “They need to take responsibility for what they’ve got and not try to hand problems over to somebody else.”

Minister of Health Everett Hindley — speaking Wednesday at an event boasting an 80-per-cent completed parking garage at Regina’s General Hospital — said he wasn’t opposed to something similar.

“It’s important for us as a government to make sure that we’re open to any and all possibilities when it comes to innovative ways to deliver health care,” said Hindley.

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He noted that hospitals and health-care facilities in the province are already being run by Emmanuel Health, which is a health-care ministry of the Catholic Church. For example, St. Paul’s in Saskatoon is owned by Emmanuel Health, as is St. Joseph’s Hospital in Estevan, among other properties.

“We’re going to continue those conversations to see if there’s more that they can do here in Saskatchewan,” said the minister. “We want to explore all our options.”

During a policy announcement, NDP leader Carla Beck took aim at the government for not doing more to address long-standing issues within health care.

“I’m going to correct Minister Hindley on this,” said Beck on Thursday. “They seem to be open to all possibilities, except actually sitting down with health-care workers and communities and listening to them about the things that are needed to retain people.”

— With Saskatoon StarPhoenix files from Bryn Levy

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