HEALTH. The CIUSSS de l’Estrie CHUS will close the 4th floor of the Memphrémagog Health and Social Services Center for the summer period, starting next May. This is one of the measures taken by the CIUSSS de l’Estrie – CHUS to deal with the scarcity of manpower, a phenomenon accentuated during the summer vacation period.
This news was announced to staff last week. It is one of the measures adopted by management to mitigate the effect of the summer vacation period on the number of employees present in the Magog hospital.
This period becomes even more critical in a context of labor shortages. Wishing to maintain an acceptable level of services in the emergency room and in the operating room, in particular, the CIUSSS de l’Estrie is implementing a series of solutions involving the modulation of the service offer as well as the management of human resources in most of its establishments.
In Magog, users for whom the acute care episode has ended (NSA), and who were occupying beds in the Transitional Functional Recovery Unit (UTRF) as well as in the medicine unit, will be transferred to the CHSLD of Memphremagog. To do this, 32 beds will be available on the second floor of this facility.
MORE ANNOUNCEMENTS TO COME
Other announcements could occur in the next few weeks in order to meet the challenge of summer holidays and the scarcity of labour. Management ensures that the decisions will have no impact on patients or on the quality and safety of users. “We would not do these rationalization exercises without a shortage of manpower,” explains CIUSSS communications advisor Nancy Corriveau.
A BREAK OF SERVICE WITH THE STATUS QUO
The local president of the Council of Physicians, Dentists and Pharmacists (CMDP), Dr. Benoît Carignan, observes positive and negative elements in this rationalization exercise. First of all, he appreciates the importance management attaches to finding solutions to a greater shortage of employees next summer than in previous years. He also underlines the CIUSSS’s intention to give summer vacations over a longer period in order to avoid staff burnout, as well as its concern to avoid compulsory overtime.
“We risked a serious breakdown in hospitalization services by maintaining the status quo,” he explains.
Concretely, the closure of the 4th floor is equivalent to the elimination of 19 beds in total on this floor. Some patients were waiting there before going to the CHSLD and most were UTRF transition beds, which went from 10 to 5.” We are transferring a certain number of them, but our rehabilitation specialists will no longer be able to follow their patients, he laments. This is where the shoe pinches. The danger of these measures is to lose the mission and the expertise of the UTRF. This situation is unacceptable. We are talking here about a team that has been united for a very long time. ”
PERMANENT MEASURES?
Dr. Carignan also fears that these measures will become permanent, especially if the shortage of labor continues. He cites the example of the loss of the use of telemetry and three intensive care beds, lost for more than two years in the midst of a pandemic. These services remain for the moment still excluded from the Magog hospital.
Dr. Carignan nevertheless emphasizes the openness of management to find other solutions more suited to the needs of the environment. “We believe that a more local management of our establishment would allow greater retention of our staff and a modulation of our services more adapted to the population of Magog,” he suggests.
SURPRISE FOR THE MONITORING COMMITTEE
For his part, the president of the Memphrémagog health and social services monitoring committee, Jean-Guy Gingras, was very surprised to learn this news on his return from vacation. He is sorry to see decisions without consultation announced a week after a meeting with citizens where we wanted to put more emphasis on collaboration and transparency. He wants to get an appointment quickly with the management of the CIUSSS to obtain answers.
