Wawota furious over bed closures
[ JUNE 7, 2010 - MIRANDA MINASSIAN ]
Local residents, armed with protest signs, gathered outside Wawota’s Town Hall last Thursday to protest the closure of three long-term care beds and two respite beds at Deer View Lodge.
More than a hundred people braved the rain to express their anger over the permanent closures. They hoped to get their message across to Sun Country Health Authority representatives arriving for a meeting with local municipalites.
“We want someone to listen to us and do something,” said Wawota resident Fred Easton. Easton, who was on the original committee to have the long-term care facility built in Wawota, is concerned about the fate of Deer View’s five beds, as well as the manner in which the community was notified. “We haven’t heard a reason, and the decision has already been made,” said Easton. “I think they hoped they could slip it by us.”
While representatives from Sun Country waited until Thursday’s meeting to officially announce the cuts, information about the bed closures was posted in Deer View Lodge on May 20.
While officials at the Sun Country head office said a week ago that no decision had been made and that reports of the bed closures were simply rumors circulating in Wawota, a memo was posted in Deer View Lodge that noted “we have received the following directive from the SCHR Weyburn Regional Office: Effective immediately until futther notice, we will not be admitting any more thatn 27 long term care residents and three respite.”
Thursday’s meeting, which was attended by representatives of the town of Wawota and the RMs of Wawken, Walpole, and Maryfield, was the first opportunity for the public to learn the rationale behind the bed closures.
“This was a board decision. When we received out budget we had to decide how to deal with the shortfalls,” said Sharon Bauche, chair of the Sun Country Regional Health Authority.
“Our management have been talking to the staff of the facility on how to make those cuts. These are tough decisions that need to be made,” she added.
The cuts are expected to save $110,000.
“They wouldn’t call it a cut, but it is a cut,” said Wawota mayor Norm Oliver. “It doesn’t make sense to eliminate beds to save that kind of money.”
MONTHS WAITING FOR A BED
Faye Greenbank spoke at the meeting on behalf of concerned family members.
She spoke of a family member who is waiting to get into Deer View Lodge. “She was six weeks on the Sun Country priority list for placement and to date has spent four and a half months on the Sun Country transfer list to Deer View Lodge and is currently number five,” Greenbank told the board members.
“Our health system promotes quality of life,” she continued. “At 91, her quality of life would be much better if she could spend her last days in her community where she has spent her entire life paying taxes and supporting facilities—in her community where she thought she would spend her last days.”
Greenbank pointed out that Wawota has longer wait times than the average facility in the Sun Country region. “I question why Wawota was targeted for bed closures when they have wait times longer than the Sun Country average,” she said.
FATHER MISSING FAMILY, FRIENDS
Heather Birnie also had the opportunity to address the board. “My dad is 92 years old,” she said. “He was born in this community and has lived and worked his whole life in this community. On Dec. 16 he was transferred from Deer View Lodge and admitted to Stoughton Nursing Home. He was eleventh on the transfer list to return to Deer View Lodge.
“It has been a long five and a half months missing family and visits from Legion friends who are too elderly to drive.
Birnie continued, “since this announcement his hopes are lost and he feels he will never return home. At 92 he wonders, and I quote, ‘If this is financial I don’t understand what possible difference it could make that I am taking up a bed in Stoughton rather than Wawota.’ ”
Birnie did some research and found that, on random dates there were as many as nine people waiting for transfers to Deer View Lodge, and often none waiting to be transfered to Stoughton.
DOCTORS SAY BEDS NEEDED
“After seeing the numbers, I question how Deer View Lodge has been chosen for these bed reductions when our need is obviously greater than other facilities,” Birnie said. “I am hoping my questions will be legitimately answered.”
Due to the outpouring of community support, town council asked Sun Country to postpone the bed closures. A decision on the postponement is expected by June 11 at the latest.
“We aren’t going to stop here. We will wait for their response and carry on from there if need be,” said Oliver.
One of the many concerns expressed by the local community is that people in need of care risk being forced to leave their loved ones behind to receive it.
Charlotte Kovach has seen the effect that this kind of separation can have first hand. Every three weeks she drives Dorothy Harris from the Sunrise Villa in Maryfield to visit her husband Reuben in Wolseley.
The 170 km drive, one way, and the distance from her loved one takes its toll on the 87-year-old woman.
“On the drives home she talks about how much she misses the daily contact with him, a person she has been married to for 65 years,” Kovach explained.
“Here they are closing beds, so there is less hope for them to ever get closer together.”
MLA DON TOTH DISAPPOINTED
Residents of Wawota are not the only people expressing outrage regarding the bed closures.
“I’m always disappointed when there is talk of reducing beds in rural Saskatchewan,” said Don Toth, MLA for Moosomin and speaker of the Legislative Assembly.
“I don’t know where these formulas [for cuts] come from. They don’t apply or work well in rural areas.”
MOOSOMIN DOCTORS UPSET
The action was also condemned by the seven doctors of the Moosomin Family Practice Centre.
In a letter to the Sun Country region signed by Dr. Michael Plewes of Moosomin, the point is made that the Southeast Integrated Care Centre in Moosomin is often full to overflowing because of large numbers of patients coming from the Sun Country Health Region because of facility closures there. With the closure of acute care services in Redvers, even more patients have been heading to Moosomin.
“This past five months we have been on the verge of a crisis at Moosomin Hospital, requiring bypass and closure for short periods as we have no acute care beds available for further admissions,” Plewes wrote.
“Deer View Lodge of Wawota, along with their administrator, Florie Restau, have often rescued our facility and have been able to accommodate transfers of convalescent and long-term care patients from the Sun Country district, thus opening beds at the Moosomin hospital . . . With the bed reduction in Wawota this service has been stopped.”
Plewes said in the letter that the Moosomin doctors may be hesitant to admit Sun Country patients in the Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region. We are not very hesitant to consider the review and acceptance of new patients from the Sun Country Health District and are now very reserved regarding admission of possible long-term patients from the district,” he wrote.
“These patients will effectively gridlock our system with no possible discharge outlet that . . . Deer View Lodge has provided. “We will be considering asking Oxbow Clinic, Estevan Clinics and Kipling Clinic to accept the care of patients from Sun Country if this decision is not reconsidered.”
Bauche plans to speak to the Sun Country board about the community’s concerns next week.