Don’t expect the Manitoba boundary to be open to patients from northwestern Ontario in the near future.
Administration and physicians who work at Lake of the Woods District Hospital met with Manitoba health officials this month.
President and CEO of the Kenora hospital, Ray Racette says they met with Shared Health Manitoba but at this point, the situation hasn’t changed.
“(We) talked about those clinical issues, and actually shared stories from our clinicians, because they are the ones that get caught not being able to move somebody who needs to be seen in Manitoba,” explains Racette.
“You know not being able to get them there and all the grief that brings like having to send somebody to southern Ontario.”
Racette adds even if local patients were allowed to have non-surgical medical procedures, that would help.
“(We’re) trying to find a way to access to services that actually have nothing to do with COVID…we thinking of things like MRI testing. Even being able to see a specialist. Some of these specialists are seeing patients and people are deferring services elsewhere because they want to see the clinician they know in Winnipeg.”
Right now, there is a backlog of 130 thousand surgeries and diagnostic procedures in Manitoba and Racette says the COVID situation in our provincial neighbor is worse than it is in Ontario and their staffing shortage is just as bad as here.
