More medical services set for Brandon hospital

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This article was published 30/11/2019 (2320 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Brandon Regional Health Centre is set to become a new “intermediate hub” under the next part of the province’s health-care overhaul.

The changes are laid out in a provincial report called the Clinical and Preventive Services Plan. It outlines what the province is calling a new model for health care in the province, focused on care away from Winnipeg and closer to local communities.

“This is a historic moment,” Health, Seniors and Active Living Minister Cameron Friesen said at a Friday morning news conference announcing the $250-million provincewide investment.

The five-year road map sets out a bigger role for the Brandon hospital in providing care for western Manitoba.

The hospital will see improved intensive care unit capabilities for both adults and children and consistent treatment for high-acuity (more serious) health problems. The province will also implement 24/7 consultation for the new Clinical Teaching Unit.

The goal is also to have the Brandon hospital handle more patients who would otherwise have gone to Winnipeg for treatment, including for moderate-acuity trauma and surgery. Friesen said the aim is to reduce the number of patients who have to make the trip to Winnipeg by approximately 2,500 each year.

Lanette Siragusa, chief nursing officer at Shared Health, said the “intermediate” designation is new, but it’s about building up capacity where the system needs it most.

“We see Brandon as already being a very high functioning, high volume hospital … and we would like to support Brandon to continue to do that work and even build upon it,” she said.

The buildup will mean more ability to perform internal medicine and possibly high-risk procedures, she said.

Few concrete details were available when the report was released on Friday, but Siragusa said there will eventually be more services available at the Brandon hospital. Friesen said it’s a long-term commitment, and consultations in each community still have to take place.

NDP Leader Wab Kinew said the Progressive Conservative provincial government has not learned from mistakes made with emergency-room consolidations in Winnipeg. He said the report will result in emergency-room closures in rural areas, which he called disappointing but not surprising.

“When this government closed emergency rooms in Winnipeg, it caused a lot of chaos, especially in the remaining emergency rooms … before having learned any lessons from that, they’re launching into a plan to do the same thing across the rest of the province,” he said.

The report is full of “management speak,” Kinew said, and not enough attention was paid to how the changes would work on improving patient outcomes.

“We always try and remind ourselves that health care is about people … they talk about transfers between facilities, but why aren’t they talking about reducing heart disease or reducing cancer or reducing diabetes?”

The plan does not call for immediate closures of rural emergency rooms or transitions to urgent care centres. The 2017 provincial Wait Times Task Force report did, however, say the province should look at closing rural ERs because of low patient volume.

Now that the plan has been released and people have had the chance to review it, Siragusa said the province will be holding consultations to determine what health services communities need and how to move forward.

Some emergency rooms in Westman struggle to stay open due to staffing shortages, which results in unstable access to care. Prairie Mountain Health CEO Penny Gilson said the new health-care focus could help deal with some of those issues as provincial networks are developed. Some shortages, such as the lack of anesthetists in the health region, is a nation-wide problem, Gilson said, but something PMH has been working on with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and Shared Health.

Rural health centres have been calling for more acute care out of the Brandon hospital, so Gilson said once finalized, those hospitals will be able to transfer patients to Brandon, rather than to Winnipeg.

Gilson said it is too early to say whether or what rural ERs could be closing. An implementation timeline for all changes is being worked on.

“I’m hoping moving forward, yes, we can work with local communities to determine where we deliver services, what services we deliver and how do we deliver those services in a more suitable and reliable way than we have been able to do,” she said.

Brandon East Progresive Conservative MLA Len Isleifson, also Friesen’s legislative assistant, said the implementation plan is being worked on and he expects to have more details in December. He said the plans for Brandon are “more immediate” to smooth the transition in the region.

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