Routine baby deliveries are no longer being performed in Flin Flon as of 8 a.m. Nov. 18 after the Northern Regional Health Authority (NRHA) made the decision to indefinitely suspend obstetrical services “due to lack of consistent obstetrical coverage since the departure of Flin Flon’s lone obstetrician.”
The NRHA says the decision has nothing to do with expenses and that the decision will be revisited once a provincial women’s clinical health services plan is completed.
“This was a difficult but necessary decision based on ensuring patient safety for expectant mothers and their newborns,” said the NRHA in a fact sheet.
The nearest hospital providing obstetrical services is in The Pas.
Flin Flon MLA Tom Lindsey says the decision by the NRHA is the result of cost-cutting imposed by the provincial government, which already reduced the regional health authority’s budget for the Northern Patient Transportation Program, which covers travel costs for people who receive medical services outside their community, by $1 million by no longer allowing elective escorts to upgrade from land transportation to a Calm Air flight by paying a fee.
“Every year since this government has come into power, they’ve cut the budget for the Northern Health Region,” Lindsey said. “You can’t take millions of dollars out of the budget of the Northern Health Region and expect people in the north are going to have the same access to health care that they once had.”
Churchill-Keewatinook Aski NDP MP Niki Ashton, whose riding includes Flin Flon, was there Nov. 13 for a public meeting regarding the decision and said the people who attended were unhappy and worried about what not having obstetrical services could mean for the community.
“There were people that were outraged, there were people that were frustrated,” Ashton said. “It was a very emotional meeting. It is a recruitment issue, there’s no question, but what we need is, we need the province to work with the community to ensure that the recruitment issue is resolved and the solution here is to recruit the experts, the professionals you need and the solution is not to close the birthing services.”
Lindsey said decisions such as this one make efforts to diversify the economies of northern communities more difficult at a time when the government says that it wants to stimulate northern economic development.
“People are choosing now not to stay in Flin Flon, not to live in Flin Flon because that health care service isn’t there,” he says, noting that there is no walk-in clinic for residents of the community. “When people look at retiring, one of the things people want to make sure they’ve got is adequate health care, which they always had in Flin Flon. They had doctors, they had a clinic, they had a hospital but people are beginning to question if that service will be there for them.”
Ashton said the NRHA’s approach to resolving the problem was not the correct one.
“Nobody in that room yesterday thought this was a good idea and, if anything, people were very up to finding solutions,” she said. “Unfortunately that’s not what we’ve heard from the NRHA and I would say, ultimately, though, the responsibility lies with the provincial government to lead the way in terms of working with the RHA and the community to ensure that the appropriate people are hired to do this work.”
The NRHA says that if an expecting mother shows up at the Flin Flon General Hospital emergency room in active labour, doctors will assess her and make a decision about whether they can be safely transported to The Pas or need to have an emergency birth in Flin Flon.
