Vancouver emergency-room physician Dr. Anthony Fong travelled to Port Hardy Hospital on Wednesday to help avert an ER closure, only to find a note posted on the emergency-room doors — it had been temporarily closed due to a nursing shortage.
“It goes to show how little wiggle room there is with staffing these days,” Fong said. “It’s not just about physicians, it’s not just about nurses … there’s so many people who contribute to our health-care system.”
The next day, Dr. Prean Armogam was scheduled to work his third 72-hour on-call weekend shift at Port McNeill Hospital, until he began suffering chest pains and found himself in his own ER, leaving doctors scrambling for a replacement.
The ongoing emergency-room closures on the North Island underscore why the North Vancouver Island Rural and Remote Division of Family Practice is hosting a health summit Monday and Tuesday at the Kwa’lilas Hotel in Port Hardy. The goal is to address the growing health-care crisis in the North Island, where three hospitals and a health centre are struggling to stay open amid chronic staffing shortages.
Port Hardy Hospital’s ER was closed overnight on 29 nights in October, not including 24-hour closures on weekends. Now down to three physicians, the hospital needs at least five.
Throughout ER closures in both Port McNeill and Port Hardy and on Cormorant Island since the spring, residents have expressed worry that their hospitals will close “and they’re very angry about it,” said outgoing Port McNeill Mayor Gaby Wickstrom.
Wickstrom lost the mayor’s seat to James Furney in the Oct. 15 municipal election.
Wickstrom and retired physician Dr. Granger Avery have a message for both area residents and health officials: The current model of trying to keep three acute-care hospitals plus an urgent-care health centre open in one region can’t continue.
“It’s evident that having three hospitals staffed in a region with 10,000 to 11,000 people is not a sustainable model,” Wickstrom said .
Wickstrom argues that if a one-hospital solution isn’t considered, all of the hospitals in the region and the quality of health care could be in jeopardy.
Avery, who ran a family practice in Port McNeill for nearly five decades, said the recent spate of hospital ER and lab closures, with locums brought in to keep the doors open, is not sustainable. “We can’t carry on like that.”
Given the lack of resources, one hospital in the North Island serving the Mount Waddington area — Port Hardy, Port McNeill and Port Alice — is the inevitable solution to the crisis, he said.
“The best political compromise is a new hospital at the Port Alice intersection … and the existing hospitals can be usefully repurposed for collaborative practice, urgent care and long-term care,” said Avery.
Avery said a central hospital would come with more resources, from staff to diagnostic equipment.
North Island doctors are considering a formal letter to Island Health to outline their concerns.
A letter obtained by the Times Colonist and circulating amongst North Island physicians says that doctors in Port McNeill and Port Hardy are concerned about patient safety issues, and the current situation is “neither predictable nor safe.”
The letter says both Port McNeill and Port Hardy hospitals and emergency departments are under significant strain to remain “constantly open” and provide continuous service. There are currently a total of nine physicians in the two communities, with two physicians set to leave within the next eight to 10 months, it says.
“Despite [Ministry of Health] directive, sites are closing anyway based on nursing shortages or even hospital being at capacity,” says the letter. “With 2 physicians set to leave and the added nursing shortage, the situation is coming to a head one way or another. ‘Trying harder’ doesn’t cut it anymore.”
The physicians say up to five doctors — not locums — are needed in the short term, along with greater stability in nursing staff, dedicated hours of operation across both Port Hardy and Port McNeill hospitals and better communication with patients on which hospital is open.
Dr. Ben Williams, Island Health vice-president of medicine and chief medical officer, said the health authority is committed to doing everything it can to maintain 24/7 services throughout the Mount Waddington area, including Port McNeill, Port Hardy and Cormorant Island.
The health authority is not considering a consolidation of services or closing any services, he said.
Locums have been hired to cover shifts in Port Hardy through December, he said, but given that there is a nursing shortage in the area, “sporadic closures” will likely continue.
“We continue to work on every strategy we can to recruit folks to the region,” said Williams. “The reality is that we don’t have as many people as we want in health care and it’s a significant challenge.”
B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix said Thursday that 78 of about 175 new-to-practice family physicians have signed contracts to work in the province. Of the 78, seventeen will work in Island Health. The Health Ministry remains in discussions with most of the remaining graduates.
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