'Deeply concerning': B.C. mayor says citizens are worried after local emergency department closes several times

The mayor of a B.C. community says his citizens are extremely concerned after staffing issues forced the closure of the local emergency department several times this month.

Merlin Blackwell, mayor of the District of Clearwater, said he's not even sure how many times the local hospital's seen closures in recent months.

"I can't really keep track of the number of times our emergency room's closed, it's been an ongoing issue since early last fall," he told CTV News Vancouver. "It's deeply concerning for our citizens."

Just this month alone, the emergency department at Dr. Helmcken Memorial Hospital in Clearwater, north of Kamloops, has closed at least five times. 

The facility is normally open 24 hours a day, and Interior Health has blamed "unforeseen limited staffing availability" for the recent closures.

But it's not the only health-care facility in Interior Health that's been deeply impacted by staffing shortages in recent months. Last week, Kamloops MLAs heavily criticized the health authority for the staffing situation at Kamloops' Royal Inland Hospital, which is where Clearwater residents are directed to when their local facilities are closed. 

"The situation at Royal Inland Hospital has been worsening over the last four to five years and it will continue to get worse if action isn't taken to make it better," Kamloops-South Thompson MLA Todd Stone said in a news conference Thursday, adding that staffing shortages have created what he called a "toxic workplace."

"It is time for the minister of health to start listening to these health-care workers and take the appropriate actions to rectify the situation."

Both Premier John Horgan and Health Minister Adrian Dix addressed the staff shortages Monday, saying they're not unique to B.C. or to the health-care sector.

"I know British Columbians are perplexed and concerned when we have closures of emergency rooms for brief periods of time because of staff shortages," Horgan said. "That's a direct result of appropriate responses to a global pandemic. We are seeing shortages not just in our health-care sectors but right across the economy."

Horgan said the province needs both funding from Ottawa through federal health transfers and to continue opening training opportunities for new health-care workers.

"We've got an aging population, people are retiring and we need to ensure we're that we're training the next generation coming forward," he said.

Dix blamed the staffing shortages on the COVID-19 pandemic and other crises in the province faced in the last year.

"We've added extraordinarily in terms of staff but in Interior Health in particular where a lot of these problems are faced, what we see is and what we've seen for months and months and months after the heat dome, and after the fires, and after the floods and with COVID-19 throughout and the public health emergency that's the overdose crisis, it has had an effect on people away," he said.

"When that happens you have to make adjustments either by pulling people in or by moving people around. That's why the public health system works well in those circumstances."

But Blackwell said his community is concerned it'll see more resources taken away, adding there's an additional burden of about 1,000 Trans Mountain workers using the local emergency department as a walk-in clinic.

"Citizens particularly are concerned because they fought very hard to get a modern hospital in Clearwater," he said.

"There (are) so many ways to solve this if we just go back and work on it with Interior Health, but it's still going to come down to a long-term problem with a lack of doctors and a lack of nurses."