Deer Lodge losing 15 nurses, adding aides; math doesn’t add up for Kinew

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This article was published 31/10/2017 (3007 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NDP leader Wab Kinew said Tuesday that the Deer Lodge Centre will be losing 15 nurses.

Premier Brian Pallister didn’t dispute that, but told the house that Deer Lodge is getting 27 additional staff, most of them health-care aides.

“The decision to cut nurses in our health-care system is a troubling one,” Kinew said. “It seems to be motivated purely by saving money.”

Pallister didn’t discuss how the changes will affect quality of care, but accused Kinew of being arrogant and of not understanding how the health-care system works.

Pallister later told reporters that he is not disputing that having preventive health-care programs could save money in the long run, but there are only so many dollars to go around.

“You’re hearing about that (the reduction in nurses), but not about the additional staff,” he said.

What’s happening at Deer lodge is a reallocation of work assignments, the premier explained. “Choices will be made among some wonderful programs” to decide which can be funded.

Liberal Cindy Lamoureux said that the cost of providing seniors’ day programs “has more than doubled, from $8.85 to $17.70,” evoking laughter from the Tory benches.

Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen fired back at Lamoureux, blaming the federal Liberal government for reducing the growth in health transfers to the provinces and forcing choices on the province.

“We used to have a partner, then a junior partner and now a mini-me partner,” said Goertzen.

NDP health critic Andrew Swan even tried a new angle in attacking the Pallister government’s overhaul of the health-care system.

Swan demanded to know how Goertzen could close the urgent-care centre at Misericordia and refer area residents to the new urgent-care centre at Victoria General Hospital at a time when there is major construction on Pembina Highway, Bishop Grandin Boulevard and on other routes that will make it even more difficult for them to get there.

Goertzen ignored the point, and argued that his government has improved NDP wait times, while also changing the way they’re measured — the NDP said a patient was being treated when put in an examination room, said Goertzen, while the Tories say a person is waiting until first contact with a doctor.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca