Newfoundland and Labrador NDP Leader Jim Dinn (St. John’s Centre) says that while the new Urgent Care Clinic may improve access to care, hospitals will remain congested without a plan to recruit and retain home care and long-term care workers and is calling on government to release a detailed recruitment and retention plan.
Hospitals in Newfoundland and Labrador are facing severe bottlenecks due to a shortage of long-term care beds. Dr. Scott Wilson, a St. John’s emergency physician and member of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, has confirmed to media that while urgent care services are needed, they will not ease hospital overcrowding. Dinn says that to truly address the crisis, government must implement a strong plan to recruit and retain home care and long-term care workers.
“We have heard medical professionals inside our hospitals sounding the alarm about the lack of accessible alternate level of care beds in this province, and they have been clear: this is driving hospital overcrowding,” said Dinn. “When patients can’t be moved to the appropriate level of care and acute care beds remain blocked, people slip through the cracks, paramedics face long offloading delays, and doctors, nurses, and hospital staff are left under immense pressure.”
“Throughout the election campaign, the NDP was clear that without a strong focus on recruiting and retaining healthcare workers, the crisis in our healthcare system would continue to worsen,” said Dinn. “That’s why our healthcare plan focused on strengthening the workforce. To open up beds and relieve pressure on the system, we need people in place to do the work where the gaps are greatest. Buildings don’t deliver healthcare – workers do.”
“The PC government was vocal about its ability to fix healthcare, and Newfoundlanders and Labradorians deserve to see that detailed plan now,” Dinn said. “Without immediate, meaningful investment to recruit, retain, and fairly compensate home care and long-term care workers, hospitals will remain gridlocked, and no number of urgent care clinic openings will solve a problem rooted in understaffing.”