For Immediate Release
1 March, 2023
NL NDP Leader and MHA for St. John’s Centre, Jim Dinn, expressed his condolences for the families of people that died in emergency rooms across the province, and those who have died because they could not access emergency rooms in time.
“The loss of a loved one is never easy and our condolences go out to the families. We can’t fathom how much worse a family’s grief is when they’re left questioning if timely access to heath care would mean that their loved one would still be with them today.”
Dinn is calling on government to prioritize retaining public healthcare workers in the province and says increased emergency room deaths point to a failure of government’s approach.
“The increase in emergency room deaths should be a wakeup call to government to refocus their priorities and fix the human resource issues in our public healthcare system that’s causing workers to quit,” Dinn said.
Last year the province saw a five-year high in emergency room deaths of 326, an increase of 22% over the year before, this was the greatest percentage increase of any province in Atlantic Canada. The NDP is concerned that the government has yet to announce the comprehensive human resources plan for health that was promised over a year ago which would tackle the root of the problem.
“It’s easy to say you’re building a new hospital,” said Dinn. “The real work is addressing the human resources issues that are fueling the crisis. You can attract all the healthcare professionals from abroad that you want, but if you’re subjecting them to the same working conditions that make staff quit at an alarming rate, we’re setting the system up for perpetual failure,” said Dinn.
“We can’t continue to lose healthcare workers. People are dying. We have to stop the bleeding.”
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For further information, contact Stephanie Curran, Media Relations Manager, NDP Caucus at 330-0328 (o), or stephaniecurran@gov.nl.ca