(Brady Lang/650 CKOM file photo)

By CKOM News

SHA

Sask. hopes to soon resume some cancelled health services, including organ donation

Nov 9, 2021 | 1:45 PM

The Saskatchewan Health Authority has released a plan that will include the resumption of a variety of health services that were paused across the province as healthcare workers were redeployed to help with a surge of COVID-19 patients.

During a provincial COVID briefing with reporters Tuesday, Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency president Marlo Pritchard said resuming organ donation procedures was on the list as well.

“We will make every effort to restart organ donations as much as possible by the end of the month,” he said, “assuming we continue to see ICU cases decline over that time, which will ensure the required hospital capacity.”

The SHA’s Derek Miller said staff that worked in the organ donation program are still deployed to ICU units, and as demand is reduced, staff can go back to their “home” units.

“Ideally we’ll be able to move those people back by the end of November,” he said.

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Other staff will also need to be able to move back to help establish operating room times.

“We’re hoping based on the trend that we’re seeing in a slow decline in those hospitalization numbers that there would support a resumption of that programming,” Miller said.

At this point, it’s not clear whether there will be extra staff to help out with the backlog of cases.

It’s also unclear at this time how many organ donations have been postponed since the program was halted in late September. Miller says the SHA is looking at any options that might be available to help it work through the backlog and waitlists for surgeries.

Other health services

The plan, according to the SHA, is to have half of the staff who were redeployed across the province back at their “home” positions by this Friday.

Then, by Nov. 19, the goal is to have 75 per cent of staff back, while 90 per cent is the target for the end of the month. The types of services available will depend on the area of the province.

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