Pilot project teams up doctors and nurses in Regina hospital unit

The Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region is promoting its accountable care unit at the Pasqua Hospital.

It is a team-based approach where the doctor spends the day in the unit with nurses and other team members.

It is hoped this pilot project will lessen the time the patient stays in hospital and make things more efficient while they are there.

Stefanie Ward is one of those nurses who cites an example of a patient who needed an IV test that wasn’t going well.

“Previously, like, the patient would have come back up here, I would have spent all day going to the doctor, they maybe would have ordered it the next day, so it would have been a three-day process. That is now only taking an hour or too,” she explained.

The pilot project has been implemented in unit 4a which is family medicine, dealing with things like kidney disease and diabetes.

It is being paid for through existing resources in the health region and $305,000 of funding from the government’s emergency waits and patient flow initiative.

The six-month program will run through August and then will be reviewed in the hopes it can be adopted in other units and hospitals across the province.