Selkirk to get more hospital beds

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/12/2021 (1563 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba government will spend $31.6 million to add 30 acute-care beds to the Selkirk hospital by 2024.

Premier Heather Stefanson and Health Minister Audrey Gordon went to Selkirk Friday to make the announcement.

They did not explain how the 30 extra beds would be staffed or how the province plans to address a critical backlog of surgeries and tests that is close to 140,000 procedures.

“The new beds will support more inpatients from across the region locally,” said Stefanson, following in the footsteps of former premier Brian Pallister who announced several rural hospital expansions before he resigned in August.

The 2021 budget included $812 million for 38 such projects across the province, Stefanson said in Selkirk, where construction is expected to begin next year and be completed in 2024.

The COVID-19 pandemic created and exposed challenges in Manitoba’s health-care system, she said.

It reaffirmed the PC government’s commitment to provide better health care with reduced wait times, improved access and more services in communities closer to home for all Manitobans, the premier said.

“These news beds will help enhance this facility’s capacity to treat and monitor sicker patients,” Stefanson said at the Selkirk Regional Health Centre, which was built in 2017.

Adding beds will help to better repatriate patients to the health region, said Dr. Anthony Herd, medical lead at the health centre. It will open more space for surgical patients and help recruit medical staff, he said.

“We anticipate this jewel of a health centre that’s received national recognition for its design will attract more surgeons, specialists and family physicians to the region,” Herd said.

The opposition questioned the government’s priorities and plan to add more hospital beds when there’s not enough staff for the beds it has now.

“Who is going to staff this?” asked NDP health critic Uzoma Asagwara. “Where are they going to find the nurses and allied health care professionals? There’s no plan whatsoever mentioned to address the fact that we’re currently in a staffing crisis that is a direct result of their cuts and mistreatment of nurses and health care workers,” Asagwara said.

“They come out today with no solution offered to the backlog that they’re largely responsible for in terms of not addressing the staffing crisis, and make another announcement instead that requires an increase in staffing capacity that they have no plan to meaningfully, or at all, address.”

While expanded access to rural health care is needed, a lack of beds is not the problem, said Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont, who questioned the government’s priorities.

“Today’s announcement is not going to do anything urgent to address a massive backlog in surgical procedures and test which should be the single biggest priority of this government,” he said.

“They’re building something, but buildings don’t provide health care, people do. So unless we’re actually going to have people — nurses, doctors, technicians — to work in these hospitals, it’s not going to make a difference. The single biggest priority is hiring and retaining nurses – that’s the single biggest obstacle to clearing the surgical backlog,” said Lamont who was “truly surprised” Friday’s announcement was not about the province’s plan to clear the surgical backlog that Gordon had promised would be unveiled this week.

“An announcement is forthcoming,” Gordon said Friday. “We take very seriously as a government our commitment to provide Manitobans with the surgeries they need as well as the diagnostic tests.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca