
Photo showing the Merritt ER closed in October, 2023/via Mike Goetz
“The emergency department at Nicola Valley Hospital is normally open 24/7.”
This is the standard tag line which Interior Health rolls out with on the bottom of its news releases each time a closure takes place at the Nicola Valley Hospital in Merritt, as well as the hospitals in Lillooet, Clearwater, Clinton, 100 Mile House and Williams Lake in the Thompson-Okanagan division of Interior Health.
Last year in Merritt, that community endured close to two-dozen emergency room closures, many of them double-shift shutdowns, meaning the Nicola Valley Hospital’s emergency room was shut down for the better part of 30 different shifts at the E-R.
Yet, with the seemingly available jobs in Merritt for health care workers, the recruitment process has been stalled.
This, as the PRRI funding to try to entice nurses to come to British Columbia expires at the end of this month.
Befor the HEU and the 8-thousand dollar at year incentive for nurses to travel and work in a place like Merritt and elsewhere hasn’t been renewed.
The PRRI, the Processional Rural and Retention Initiative, essentially leading there we which the province set up a year-long incentive program to try to entice more staffers to hospital where shortages are endemic.
Staffing levels change but level of compassion remains stiff
If the PRRI isn’t renewed by the end of this month, Interior Health will lose out an additional tool to recruit staff, which for the area hospitals is critical.
Merritt is currently dealing with a chronic shortage of long-term staff due to standard attrition or promotion to areas — such as Kamloops — is what’s behind all of the recent shutdowns.
Nine since February 22nd, according a look-back through the archived news releases.
Since the end of October, Interior Health has stopped putting a date on the outside of the news releases in its archives, instead changing that area to “time to read,” which is marketing tool to try to get people to read long-form news pieces.
It makes it much more difficult to count the number of times, closures, etc.
That same unexplained policy changes also saw the Authority stop offering a rationale as to why it’s being forced to close a hospital.
The standard Interior Health response during an ER shutdown is to notify residents of the amount of time it’s going to be closed and the diversion protocols, which also seem to have been quietly amended for Merritt last year as well.
Last year, Interior Health would offer people from the City of Merritt and the Nicola Valley a choice of where they wanted to divert Kelowna General if they wanted.

Senior waits for medical care/via CNN
Now, each ER diversion from Merritt is directed toward Kamloops and Royal Inland Hospital, adding to that hospital’s ER wait times.
IH’s standard note then goes on “humble brag” about its ability to maintain a 24/7 online nursing portal, where a doctor or nurse practitioner, will provide medical advice over the phone.
By comparison, when Fraser Heatlh was forced into diverting patients away from Delta’s hospital overnight on the weekend of February 21st, that authority made a point of not-only explaining how long the shutdown was going to be for, but what resources were going to be on-hand during the diversion.
“Fraser Health advises Delta and surrounding area residents that due to physician staffing challenges at Delta Hospital, Fraser Health is implementing a temporary service interruption beginning at 9:30 p.m. on Sunday, February 23 to Monday, February 24 at 6:30 a.m. The service interruption will begin at 9:30 p.m. to ensure all patients already in the emergency department can be seen by a physician before they end their shift at 1:30 a.m,” said Fraser Health in its release.
“After 9:30 p.m., emergency-trained nurses will continue to be on site and available to support walk-in patients needing basic first aid, assist with re-direction of care, and/or transfer patients with urgent needs to a neighboring hospital.”
“We appreciate your patience and support as we address these Health Human Resource challenges and thank our staff, medical staff and BC Emergency Health Services staff for their commitment to providing quality care,” finished the Fraser Health Authority in its news release dated to February 22nd.
That compares to the contention at the end of every Interior Health release that the hospital emergency room “is normally open 24/7.”
By definition, normal means conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected.
It could be argued that nine shutdowns of the local emergency room in the course just over nine weeks this year has become “normal.”
Shutdown number nine began this Saturday evening at 6pm and running until 7am on Sunday — a twelve, rather than thirteen-hour shutdown this time, due to the clocks jumping forward by an hour Sunday morning at 2am.