The Dauphin Regional Health Centre has made a few more advancements in service restoration since the Emergency Department's reopening in September, and is poised to make a few more in the coming months.
Treena Slate, Prairie Mountain Health CEO, visited the DRHC yesterday, to have conversations with physicians and contractors about what the highest priorities are in next steps, especially with additional lab services.
"Developing a schedule and a set of priorities based on what the clinicians see are the priorities, in terms of, what's the sequencing, what would be the priority next step if we had our choice, what could we open next on the main floor, what would we do...we are working on expanding some of the services that are [in the lab], so that will be kind of the next thing that you'll hear about," said Slate.
Restoration of additional lab services is a big priority right now. Slate said PMH wants to continue reducing the travel necessary for services, and another way they'll do that is to bring in trailers in the coming months to supplement services that will take a while to fully restore.
More specialized services, like hemodialysis and chemotherapy, also look to be on the horizon for the DRHC.
"People are right now travelling for some of those tests, so that will be kind of the next thing that you'll hear about. Work on also getting some mobile trailers in, to support some of the services that are gonna be shut down for a long period of time...chemotherapy is starting in Grandview next week, and hemodialysis hopefully very soon, in the next few weeks," said Slate.
In the short-term, after the emergency department reopened at the start of September, Slate said PMH's focus would be on expanding emergency department-specific services, to ensure the emergency department reaches a good level of care. In the month it's been open, Slate said they've made quite a few positive improvements, and they're still working on more.
"We're working on improving accessibility to spaces in the emergency department, and really hoping that those are things that we can expand sooner than later in the emergency department to get it a little bit more functional," said Slate.
However, with the positive advancements in the emergency room and additional services, there's still a lot of work to be done in repairing and inspecting flood-damaged areas. Pumps are still running, and there's still a lot of work to still be done.
"[Crews have] done a tremendous job of cleaning out that silt, so after that's cleaned out, they still have to do soil testing and some remediation work in there," said Slate.
Another positive is the installation of temporary heating in the emergency room and currently open departments, as winter gets closer.
Slate said Prairie Mountain Health will continue to provide updates on the restoration of services as repairs progress.
