Frustration mounts over repeated E.R. closures across B.C. interior

There is mounting frustration over emergency department closures at several hospitals throughout British Columbia due to long weekend staffing shortages.

And while many are calling the situation intolerable, the province’s health minister says “everything possible” is being done to fix it.

Adrian Dix said the province has hired hundreds of doctors and nurses qualified to work in emergency rooms, but in many parts of B.C., those facilities are still seeing diversions.

“We are struggling across the system, there are system failures across the board in all specialties but we are feeling it the hardest in the emergency room,” said Dr. Aimee Kenrick, president of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians.

“We’re the one door that’s always supposed to be open and we can’t even maintain that — emergency rooms are closing across the province and across the country and we’re failing our patients.”

Over the Labour Day long weekend, British Columbia recorded five such closures in the province’s interior.

Those included facilities in Oliver, Merritt, Lillooet, Williams Lake and 100 Mile House, forcing people in the South Cariboo to travel hours away for care.

“This is a national problem, and we’re addressing it with comprehensive short-term measures and others in the long run,” Dix said.

Local leaders say more help is needed.

“These are necessities of life and we cannot shut down the E.R., and I’m really concerned when I talk to local nurses and doctors — they’re burning out, there’s a lack of staff,” Williams Lake Mayor Surinderpal Rathor said.

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“I am tired of the politics around this. This is a crisis situation. We have to figure out what the path forward is,” added Cariboo Chilcotin BC Conservative MLA Lorne Doerkson.

“That is what I’m frustrated about because that plan does not seem to be coming forward.”

Experts say decades of chronic underfunding and inadequate planning have come to the forefront.

“If we continue to throw money at the same failing solutions, that’s not going to provide a different outcome,” Kenrick said.

Data compiled by global News shows emergency departments run by Interior Health and Northern Health closed 54 times in August.

Eight closures were reported in Oliver, seven in Lillooet, and four in 100 Mile House and Merritt.

In the north, the emergency room closed 10 times in the Mackenzie area, five times in Prince Rupert and four times in Chetwynd.

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