Lanigan mayor pushing for answers about shuttered local emergency services

It has been about two years since people in Lanigan were able to get stitches or even a tetanus shot in the hospital in their town — and the mayor is still looking for answers.

Early in the pandemic, emergency services at the hospital in Lanigan were shut down, both to move workers to other areas and to protect the vulnerable residents of the seniors home which is connected to the hospital.

However, it’s now two years later and Mayor Tony Mycock said he’s being told there still are staffing issues, but he isn’t getting any answers about when the doors will open again.

“We hear that, ‘It’s going to open at the end of this month,’ and then it gets pushed off again and again and again. We just want some answers and (will do) whatever we can do to work together to figure this problem out,” said Mycock.

The town has a great ambulance service, according to Mycock.

“They’ve been run off their feet because they’re transporting patients to Humboldt or Saskatoon,” Mycock said.

And now, the mayor said, the ambulance service is having staffing issues as well.

Humboldt is about a half-hour from Lanigan and Saskatoon is more than an hour away. Mycock said the travel and the inconvenience are frustrating.

“If something happens at a local hockey game, we’re calling the ambulance to take that person to wherever we can get in. And I know people that have gone to Humboldt and sit there for three (or) four hours to wait to see somebody,” explained Mycock.

There are some people who moved back to town because of the hospital and now Mycock said he’s wondering if those people are going to leave again.

But it’s actually a growing population that concerns Mycock about this situation. With the new BHP mine going in nearby, a close Nutrien mine expanding and a new school being built in the town, he said the community is actually growing.

“We’re looking to have an increase in population and we need a hospital for that,” said Mycock.

Mycock has made all kinds of inquiries trying to get the services open, but he said the Saskatchewan Health Authority rep they can meet with is running into roadblocks as well.

Mycock just wants to have a meeting with the people who can actually make decisions.

“We’re willing as a town and the surrounding communities to work together to figure this out, but we need dialogue,” he said.

Mycock was at the Legislative Building on Wednesday, invited by the opposition NDP and hoping to garner a meeting that way.

Vicki Mowat, the NDP’s health critic, said she was astonished to hear about the situation in Lanigan.

“It’s deeply disappointing to see that government hasn’t prioritized this community,” she said.

Mowat said Mycock was doing all the right things at the local level to get answers but the Ministry of Health isn’t responding and hasn’t even started a dialogue about it — and Mowat said Lanigan isn’t alone in this situation.

“It’s completely unfair that, right now, these are being treated as one-off situations where each individual community needs to meet with the SHA to say, ‘Here are our concerns,’ (and) needs to have these roundtables,” said Mowat.

While the province has said that it’s working on a plan to recruit and retain health-care workers — pointing to money allocated in the spring budget — Mycock said he hasn’t seen any plan.

Mowat said there’s a trend of the Saskatchewan Party government putting small amounts of money into massive problems in the health system, which she said is just paying lip service.

The Saskatchewan Health Authority confirms that emergency services haven’t resumed in Lanigan because of staffing issues.

“Staffing is vital to maintaining safe care in any health-care setting,” the authority said in a statement.

The authority also pointed to money allocation in the spring budget for health-care worker recruitment and retention, including targets for critical and hard-to-fill positions as well as positions in rural areas.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated to add the health authority’s response and to specify that it was emergency services in the Lanigan hospital which were shut down.