The South Bruce Grey Health Centre says it’s set to reopen key services in the coming weeks.
At a special meeting on Monday (April 25) the hospital organization’s board of directors approved a plan to reopen services at both the Walkerton and Chesley hospitals.
A release from SBGHC says, with its staff, along with the use of agency nurses, casual nurses, student externs and registered midwives, the Walkerton hospital Emergency Department (ED) will resume 24-hour service on Monday, May 9th, 2022.
On the same day, the Inpatient Unit at the Chesley site of SBGHC will return to eight acute care beds and ten Seniors Centre of Care beds. Four of these eight acute beds were previously reopened on March 21st.
The SBGHC says the use of agency nurses, casual nurses, student externs and registered midwives were all implemented as part of SBGHC’s Recruitment and Retention Action Plan which was released in January 2022.
The hospital hopes to reopen the Chesley ED to 24-hour service on June 15th, 2022.
SBGHC says the stability of staffing will be monitored over the next five weeks, before the reopening of the Chesley ED is finalized.
The Hospital says its readiness for the reopening has been measured against two key factors – the ability to adequately staff all nursing departments across the four hospital sites, and the ability to grant vacation in the amount that meets or exceeds the entitlement of each bargaining unit.
It notes, in the short term, its plan to reopen services is heavily reliant on the use of agency nurses to stabilize staffing levels, while new and novice staff gain experience.
In the longer term, its says its commitment to training and recruitment efforts will ensure a more stabilized staffing pool, and the gradual move away from the use of agency nurses.
The SBGHC notes, its plan does not come without risk, including additional expense associated with the use of agency nurses and the chance of a future temporary reduction in service if the agency nurse pool dries up, or the provincial Health Human Resource situation deteriorates.
President and CEO Michael Barrett says in a statement, “I am very pleased that SBGHC will again be providing 24/7 service to all our communities. We will be closely monitoring the reopening plan to ensure we do it in a safe manner where we can continue to provide high quality care to the patients we serve.”
Barrett adds, “I want to emphasize that the risk of further reductions is very real, but we are proceeding knowing that we run this risk. This approach is different than the approach we have taken since the reduction of services in the Chesley ED in 2019, where we indicated that we would not reopen if there was any future risk of having to close again. With the ongoing critical nursing shortage continuing to be felt across the Province, we have decided that it is important to our communities to return all of our operations to 24/7 service if we can do it now, even if there is a chance of a time-limited reduction in service in the future.”
SBGHC Board Chair Bill Heikkila says, “The same non-negotiables that resulted in the Board’s decision to reduce services in September 2019 and again in December 2021 are still at play. We cannot provide care in a manner that is unsafe, and we cannot provide care that further deteriorates our staff,” he adds, “It has been a significant effort to get to this point, and we are very happy to restore these critical services in our communities. However, we are remaining cautiously optimistic as the provincial health human resource situation remains challenging.”
The SBGHC has hospitals in Chesley, Walkerton, Durham and Kincardine.
