‘Complete shock to a lot of us’: Lynn Lake grapples with hospital patient transfers

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This article was published 01/09/2022 (1494 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The town of Lynn Lake is reeling after long-term hospital patients were transferred to a facility an eight-hour drive away, with families getting minimal notice.

Fred Salter visited his wife, 82-year-old Alice Salter, at Lynn Lake Hospital any day he could. She was there as an in-patient resident and has Alzheimer’s disease.

He was staying at a Thompson hotel in early August, when he received a phone call from his daughter at 6 a.m., telling him his wife was being moved to Flin Flon General Hospital. He got to see her before she moved, but it is of little consolation.

“I tried to call Lynn Lake Hospital and there was no answer,” said Salter, 82. “And I tried to call Flin Flon, and they knew nothing of what was going on… There was no warning that this was going to happen. It was just happening.”

Flin Flon is roughly 230 kilometres south of Lynn Lake by air, but almost 700 km by road. Salter hasn’t been able to make the trip yet, and said he likely won’t be able to make it often.

Salter, who worked on hospital boards across the province before his retirement, said Northern Health’s callous response wasn’t the way to manage short-staffing at the hospital located some 1,000 km north of Winnipeg.

“Am I disappointed? Yes. I’d been in management for a long time, you must have an alternate plan if something goes wrong,” he said. “Obviously, they didn’t.”

The pair have lived in Lynn Lake for more than 30 years. It was their dream to live out their final days in the community.

“Alice and I had planned our retirement here, to die here and to be buried here,” Salter said. “Now those plans have been changed. We don’t know where we’ll end up and where we will die.”

Lynn Lake deputy mayor David Campbell said the mayor’s office received a call letting it know some patients would be being airlifted out due to “staffing issues” about 36 hours before the move.

“There was no long-term, or any, answer given as to when the patients were going to come back,” Campbell said. “So to us, it means it’s going to be a permanent situation, because we always have a staffing issue up here.”

Campbell has seen his community of roughly 600 struggle to grapple with the move in the month since.

The deputy mayor said one such resident died weeks after being arriving in Flin Flon, and her son, who also needs long-term care, was distraught he wasn’t able to be by his mother’s side.

“It became a complete shock to a lot of us because there was no forewarning of this going to happen,” Campbell said. “And you have to understand all these patients have been in that hospital, some for up to 10 years. That’s been their home.”

A spokesperson for Northern Health said there were fewer than 10 patients transferred throughout the last week of July, and the decision was made after persistent staffing issues became severe.

“Patient safety was paramount in making the decision to transfer the in-patients from Lynn Lake Hospital to Flin Flon General Hospital, which impacted our ability to enter into substantive consultation with the patients’ families (which we would have preferred),” the spokesperson said in an email.

“The moves were done in a phased manner over the last week of July to again ensure patient safety and adequate resources were available to meet these patients’ needs.”

No new in-patient clients will be accepted to Lynn Lake Hospital for the time being.

There is no estimated date of return for the transferred patients, the spokesperson said, “given the deep, national, unrelenting staffing shortages.”

It’s another blow to a community that has suffered by a thousand cuts, Campbell said. Mental health-care services, a public health nurse position and a foot care nurse position have all been lost in recent years.

“We have a population that suffers a lot from alcohol issues and drug issues, as well as mental health issues, and they don’t have any support here as well,” he said.

At this point, Campbell said, people in need of any kind of long-term hospitalization are being moved out via medivac flights. Lynn Lake Hospital also serves neighbouring communities, including Brochet and Leaf Rapids.

Campbell said the Lynn Lake town council will be meeting Friday with Northern Health to discuss the patient transfers.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca