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Information sharing was the focus of the latest meeting of the Lloydminster Concerned Citizens for Seniors Care Society.
Graham Brown, who chairs the seniors’ advocacy, shared an update on the hiring of continuing care aides (CCA) by the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) at Tuesday’s lunch gathering.
As part of the 2022-23 provincial budget, the government has provided $6.5 million to fund the hiring of an additional 117 CCA positions.
Most positions are for long-term care facilities and home-care support.
Brown read an email from SHA’s Neil Sylvestre, executive director of continuing care, northwest region, noting of the 70 recent hires, 3.1 CCA full-time equivalents and 1 CCA for home care went to the rural region and none to Lloyd.
“I guess they determined there were areas that had more of a shortage than we do,” said Brown.
The Seniors Care Society is also preparing information for a bi-provincial meeting of the Continuing Care Spaces Working Group to increase the number of long-term care beds in the city.
Back in 2019, SHA and Alberta Health Services (AHS) identified a need for 60 additional long-term beds by 2025 and another 148 by 2035, but the numbers may have changed.
“The committee will be meeting on Oct. 4. AHS and SHA representatives will be here and we’ll discuss moving this project forward in getting more spaces in Lloydminster,” said Brown.
“We want to identify the process. We have done some preliminary stages of identifying the numbers we need, but that was before the pandemic. Since then, we need to confirm those numbers and get moving on what our next steps are.”
Brown also reports the Lloydminster Chamber of Commerce has taken on the fight to share online medical patient records for clinics and doctors on both sides of the city through Netcare, and hopes both organizations are on the same page.
“The Chamber of Commerce, in their policy sessions, did write to both ministers about Netcare and the problems with Netcare being available on both sides of the city,” said Brown.
The Chamber says lack of sharing poses a problem with information sharing between hospitals and treatment centres in the provinces.
In addition, Saskatchewan licensed doctors are denied access while taking on Alberta patients.
“We commend them for the work on that issue and want to talk to them to make sure when we’re addressing issues we’re both proposing the same issues,” said Brown.
On another matter, Brown says his group has also prepared a list of questions concerning the flow of long-term care residents inside and outside the city to pass along to the people that manage that service in our community.
The questions arose following a meeting on May 17 with a group of placement officials, such as how many people are currently in the Lloydminster Hospital awaiting long-term care placement and what is the difference between a waitlist and a transfer list.
“The idea is to see if we can learn more about how it works and we would like to have them come to our meeting again and help us understand how that process works and what we can do to improve it,” said Brown.
They are also hoping to learn what changes, if any, have been made to the system since May.
No date has been set for a follow-up meeting, yet.
