By Angela Hill

Beds to open in Hafford

Aug 4, 2011 | 7:19 AM

A rural community will see more beds open in the health centre as part of a pilot project to deal with pressure on the always-full Victoria Hospital.

Hafford Special Care Centre and Primary Care Centre will have four beds open — two to be used as part of the first available bed policy and two as flex beds.

“The community is really happy and we have a couple of beds to help get people out of our hospital,” said Carol Gregoryk, vice-president integrated health services with the Prince Albert Parkland Health Region.

The first available bed policy gives care to people while they wait for permanent placement in the special-care home of their choice, but gets them out of the hospital. The flex beds can be used for people in the community, for emergency respite or for addition recovery time.

This is a step in the right direction for health services in Hafford, said Stan Novicki, chairman of the Hafford Health Advisory Board.

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“Oh I think we’re all happy about that, we’ve been working for it for the last six years, we finally got it so we’re quite pleased.”

The community has lost other services in recent years, such as the x-ray machine, and a reduction in lab service time, Novicki said, so it’s nice to see services returning.

“The rooms were empty anyway, so I give them credit for that, that’s a good point for them,” he said.

Staff and equipment needs to be put in place before the beds can be used.

“So until that happens we wouldn’t open the beds, we need to make sure we are safe. The director is working on that now, they are working on rotations changes as well as recruitment of staff,” Gregoryk said.

She said she hopes to see them be ready to start taking people in September.

The beds will also be part of a new trend to share services between health regions. If no one is able to use the bed in Hafford from the Prince Albert Parkland Health Region, the space will be offered to Prairie North, Gregoryk said.

Waitlist in the cities in that health region are even longer than in Prince Albert, she said.

“We are funding the beds, but we don’t want them to sit vacant either.”

It will cost about $112,000 to open all four beds and was included as part of the 2011-12 operating budget.

ahill@panow.com