Emergency health care report released
Posted Oct 26, 2010 03:26:44 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Dr. John Ross was asked by the N-D-P a year ago to look at the delivery of health care services in the province’s emergency departments. Tuesday, that report was released to government and the residents of Nova Scotia.
His twenty-six recommendations include changes to funding and care standards, improving access to primary care to take pressure of E-R’s and develop policies around hours of operation at smaller, rural hospitals.
Dr. Ross is suggesting the government re-assess the hours of fourteen smaller, rural care facilities are open. He says there are many nights where there are few, if any life-threatening cases that come through the doors.
And he says there was an equivalent of 795 days of E-R closures last year.
“There are certain centers where they need to be open 24/7 for sure. There are other places where I think we can offer some options. Options would be variable hours or different types of on-call systems.”
And Dr. Ross says most of the patients who show up for care, do so during the day. If doctors and nurses are working overnight shifts where there are few cases, they aren’t available during the day when people are looking for health care services.
In light of the report, New Democrat Health Minister Maureen MacDonald was asked if the province is still looking at keeping all emergency rooms in the province open all of the time.
“It’s our commitment to have primary health care and to have emergency health care services available to the public. Yes 24/7.”
And she “all of the recommendations in this report will be studied in some detail in terms of how you would go forward to implement” in consultation with the people in the health care system.
