Mandryk: NDP, Sask. Party engage in nonsense rural health care debate

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In an alternate universe somewhere, there is a Saskatchewan where the NDP’s “wellness model” actually worked.

It’s a world where the 52 rural hospitals “closed” on this planet three decades ago have been successfully replaced by wellness centres run by nurse practitioners. Health care in this distant world is well into its next stages, where rural people are diagnosed and treated remotely.

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Now, don’t get me wrong: Rural people are still mad as hell in this universe.

They are demanding the government of the day hire more doctors. And the opposition of the day is screaming bloody murder, accusing government of endangering the lives of rural people by depriving them of emergency care.

Sure, there may be infinite possibilities of multiverses out there. But some things — like complaining about rural health care — ain’t ever gonna change.

Since the Saskatchewan legislature returned from its Easter break, house business has been dominated by the NDP Opposition pressing the Saskatchewan Party government on this issue.

NDP rural and remote health critic Meara Conway — fresh from her “Time to Deliver” tour of rural health-care facilities — presented an emergency motion calling on government to “ban the practice of using virtual doctors for patients giving birth to a child, or experiencing a life-threatening emergency.”

It’s an understatement to say that it would be somewhat difficult to provide virtual care to a woman giving birth or someone who has just arrived at an ambulance after a life-threatening car accident. But did this motion perfectly reflect concerns over how the health ministry is attempting to address a serious issue?

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There is no doubt that emergency and diagnostic services in rural Saskatchewan have been far too often disrupted by staffing shortages.

But there is also no doubt that doctors, nurses and other health-care providers have had fewer places to practice in rural Saskatchewan since the 1993 NDP government decision to “convert” 52 rural hospitals as a way to deal with the crushing debt left behind by the Progressive Conservative government.

At the time, former premier Roy Romanow’s government envisioned modern-day “wellness centres” staffed by capable nurse practitioners and focused on preventative health care.

Such wellness facilities, according to the NDP government of the day, would be supported by a far more integrated health system. Logic would dictate that system would have been more reliant on the then-futuristic virtual treatment of patients through online consultation now frequently used today.

One gets the Conway/NDP point that birthing and life-saving procedures can’t be physically performed over the Internet. But webcam “consultation” over the Internet is now a commonplace health-care delivery tool that’s efficient, helpful and absolutely necessary.

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Sometimes it’s even used in emergency situations when medical expertise is hundreds of miles away. But lest one assumes all the revisionism was on the left side of the Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly, consider what we heard from some Sask. Party MLAs.

“Saying women in rural areas aren’t as important and don’t deserve health care is not only heartless — it’s dangerous,” said Martensville-Blairmore MLA Jamie Martens, arguing the NDP was attempting to deny women in remote and rural areas access to a doctor during childbirth.

Given 30 years of wailing on the NDP for closing rural hospitals, one assumes Sask. Party MLAs don’t sincerely believe rural hospitals can be staffed remotely.

There again, one assumes that if the Sask. Party MLAs are as aghast over the closure of those 52 rural hospitals as they purport to be, they would have reopened at least one of them in the past 17 years.

If the Sask. Party now believes webcams are the solution in rural health care, it needs to stop talking about the NDP hospital closures. But don’t bet that will happen.

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While Conway, Martens and others actually also offered meaningful contributions, this debate got lost in a wormhole of politics. It seems ever thus.

No matter where you travel in this universe or any other, you just can’t seem to escape the politics of rural health care.

Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

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