Son says mother endured ‘brutal’ conditions at crowded Saskatoon hospital

For Tim Lang, the smell in the hallway of Saskatoon’s Royal University Hospital has lingered.

Lang visited his mother there last week after she was taken to hospital to get an MRI after suffering a stroke.

His mother spent three days in the hospital’s hallway last week awaiting the MRI.

And Lang, who lives in Unity, about 170 kilometres west of Saskatoon, is now vowing to avoid Saskatoon if either he or a family member requires health care.

He said he witnessed unsanitary conditions at RUH, including the stench from patients who had soiled themselves, and counted hundreds of people passing by his mother’s hospital bed in the hallway.

“So you’re in a hospital emergency room and the cleanliness is terrible,” Lang said in an interview Thursday. “The traffic — you’ve got a stroke victim lying in a hallway where 500 people a day walk past your bed. It was just brutal.”

John Ash, vice-president of integrated Saskatoon health with the Saskatchewan Health Authority, told reporters Thursday that the peak of the overcrowding has passed.

Ash held a news conference in response to viral social media videos posted by Saskatoon real estate agent Lynn Harmon showing patients crowded into hallways at RUH.

At the height of the capacity pressure last week, 42 patients were waiting for an in-patient bed, Ash said.

“Your ultimate goal is we don’t want to have patients waiting in the hallways,” he added.

Hallway health care draws fire in overcrowded Saskatoon hospital

The SHA is adding 109 beds in Saskatoon to prevent future overcrowding, Ash said. Twenty of the beds have opened so far.

An early start to flu season helped contribute to the overcrowding, Ash said.

He added that people have the right to record video inside hospitals like RUH, but he cautioned people to show respect for the privacy of staff and patients.

“We want to make sure that everybody knows that the emergency departments are there when we need them,” Ash said.

But Keith Jorgenson, the Opposition NDP shadow health minister, said the videos reveal “unacceptable” conditions at the hospital.

“It shows us clearly that our health-care system is broken,” Jorgenson told reporters at a news conference in Saskatoon Thursday.

Lang said he counted 172 people passing by his mother’s bed in the hallway at RUH from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. on Sept. 25. He said the non-stop traffic prevented his mother from sleeping.

The lack of sleep made it difficult to assess her condition when she had appointments with a speech pathologist and an occupational therapist, he said.

His mother was eventually transferred to a private room, where she improved dramatically, Lang said. She is now recovering at a hospital in Unity.

But Lang remains upset about the conditions in the hallway at RUH. He said urine on the floor in the hallway was insufficiently cleaned.

“The cleanliness in there was atrocious,” Lang said. “And the smell was atrocious.”

Lang also said there were many people at the hospital suffering from substance abuse who probably needed treatment at a facility dedicated to addiction.