B.C.’s Minister of Health says he plans to visit the Ashcroft Hospital this summer to hear about some of the issues it is facing.

Adrian Dix says he wants to hear from people there about healthcare service shortfalls.

“It’s a full on effort, both in the short term with the recruitment being really critically important for Ashcroft and communities around the region. It’s also important in the long term, I think increasingly we’re working to train people in the Interior. We believe that training more people in the Interior will lead to more people working in the Interior. We’ve got to make decisions now that make this problem better in the future.”

The emergency room in the Ashcroft Hospital only has enough staff to be open on weekends, and in the past 12 months it has seen repeated overnight closures because of limited staffing.