The emergency department at Dr. Helmcken Memorial Hospital in Clearwater, BC is temporarily closed for the third time this month.
The apartment closed on Sunday morning. It was initially scheduled to reopen on Monday at 7 a.m., but late on Sunday, Salud Interior announced that the closure would be extended until Monday at 7 p.m.
In a tweet, the health authority said it “regrets this temporary change.”
Read more:
Clearwater ER closed overnight due to lack of staff
In an emergency, patients are asked to call 911 or visit the Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops.
The Clearwater emergency department was also closed between 8 a.m. July 2 and 8 a.m. July 3, and between 6 p.m. July 7 and 7 a.m. July 8.
For the latest closure, Interior Health attributed the closure to “limited staff availability.”
According to Clearwater Mayor Merlin Blackwell, the local emergency department has closed 21 times since the beginning of the year.
in a tweet thread, He proposed several ways to combat staffing shortages that contribute to closures, such as offering incentives to recently retired health professionals to work one or two days a week. He also suggested subsidized housing for temporary staff in rural British Columbia, more flexible education options for nurses, and more flexible payment models for doctors.
In an interview on CKNW’s The Mike Smyth Show, Blackwell described a “revolving door” of lab and X-ray technicians in his community with high levels of burnout, along with a housing crisis.
“When you’re in a small town, if you’re the lab tech, you’re the only one, so you’re available 24 hours a day,” he explained. “There is a quality of life issue that is happening for these people, and a rate of burnout that is probably happening at a faster rate than you would find in a city.”
Canada’s prime ministers are currently meeting in Victoria and health care is expected to be high on their agenda.
Global News has reached out to Interior Health for comment on this story.
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