UPDATE 5 p.m. – The shutdown of the emergency room in Clearwater has been extended a second time to 7 a.m. on Tuesday.
It means the ER at the Dr. Helmcken Memorial Hospital will be closed for 49 hours because of a lack of staff after it began at 6 a.m. on Sunday, June 10.
Asked about the closure of the emergency room in his community earlier on Sunday, Clearwater Mayor Merlin Blackwell notes it goes beyond just people living in his area.
“It’s a huge concern for public safety,” noted Blackwell. “We are the adventure tourism capital of the North Thompson – rafting , mountain biking challenging hikes in Wells Gray, plus many rugged roads to get to all these things.”
While the hospital emergency room will remain closed through most of the day on Monday, leaving the Highway 5 corridor without an ER, Blackwell notes people travelling through the area do still have access to emergency services.
“Highway 5 has had many tragic accidents in the last few months… the sad truth is that so many of them have been fatal that the were too severe to be treated locally,” noted Blackwell. “Patients bypassed us only because air ambulances needed to take them directly to RIH. Usually less severe injuries are stabilized in Clearwater’s ER, then transported on to Kamloops by ground ambulance.”
Transportation by ground ambulance from Clearwater to Royal Inland Hospital can take an hour or longer, depending on traffic.
Additionally, Blackwell says it would take four RN’s to stabilize the situation. He adds the issue extends to other departments outside the Emergency Room.
“We’re short a couple of LPN’s as well. And a big one for us is we have this rotating door of lab and x-ray techs because when you’re in a small town, if you are the lab tech then you’re the only one so you are on 24 hour call.”
The extension of the shutdown represents the 20th closure of the hospital’s emergency room announced by Interior Health so far this year — 324 hours in total, or 13.5 days out of the year.
The Sunday shutdown of Dr. Helmcken Memorial’s ER has also drawn the ire of the local MLA, Kamloops-North Thompson BC Liberal Peter Milobar.
This is unacceptable @adriandix ! Too many closures of the ER and diverting people over an hour and a half to an already busy ER in #Kamloops is no solution. Clearwater loses ER services for 19th time in 2022 | Radio NL – Kamloops News #bcpoli https://t.co/9ObR92rkPf
— Peter Milobar (@PeterMilobar) July 10, 2022
Milobar spoke on the NL Morning News with Jeff Andreas Monday, saying it feels like the powers don’t seem to care.
“It is very concerning and it used to be very irregular, if it did happen, and it was IHA took steps immediately to try to get it open as fast as possible,” he said. “It just feels each time that it happens that is becomes less and less of a priority for the province, for IHA, and that may not be case, but that is certainly what it fees like.”
Milobar adds similar issues are happening in other centres such as Ashcroft, adding that they all seem to be in the northern part of Interior Health.
“The solution of telling people to go to Kamloops to an already overrun hospital just makes the problem worse overall, and in the long term we are starting to see that build and build and build. It is not good for patient care,” Milobar said.
“The residents of Clearwater and the valley deserve to have a hospital operating at the level of care and standard that it was built and designed and funded for.”
Additionally, Milobar adds that when the walk-in clinic in Victoria faced closures, the Horgan government had no problem finding the money to keep it open.
He says if immediate action isn’t taken by the Province and Interior Health, we can expect to see more of these closures in the coming months.
