colleen quinlan, executive director of mental health and addictions for urban areas, said the facility was only seeing patients from regina to reduce the risk of spreading covid-19 from different parts of the province.
she said patients who needed addictions care could be admitted to the 10-bed youth unit at royal university hospital’s dubé centre. she said she was not aware of any physicians outside regina struggling to find a detox program for a minor.
she also noted a six-bed voluntary stabilization program at saskatoon’s calder centre was kept open, even as that facility stopped taking referrals for its 28-day youth and adult addictions treatment programs.
hinz, who splits her time between an outpatient mental health clinic for minors and two-week shifts at dubé, estimated between one and two beds at the centre have been filled by people who would otherwise go to the secure youth detox centre.
“certainly i like to think that we provide excellent acute mental health care at the dubé centre, but we are not an addictions facility, so we don’t have addictions counsellors on staff,” hinz said.
quinlan and calder centre program manager nicole schumacher said health care staff had to make hard choices when covid-19 arrived.