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A hospital in B.C.’s Fraser Valley is closing its emergency department during overnight hours for more than a week due to staffing challenges.
Mission Memorial Hospital’s emergency department will operate from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. from Dec. 29 to Jan. 6, according to a news release from Fraser Health.
The closures, it says, reflect “systemic pressures being experienced across Canada.”
During that time, the hospital will have emergency-trained nurses to assess walk-in patients and provide basic care, as well as redirect them to a neighbouring hospital if their needs are more urgent.
Mission Memorial Hospital site medical director Dr. Paul Theron said in the statement that the temporary closure is to “enable consistent and plannable hours” while allowing the hospital to “align services with available staffing and maintain patient safety.”
Theron also says the hospital is working with the provincial Ministry of Health “to stabilize longer-term staffing.”
The closures mark the seventh time this year that the hospital will be temporarily closing overnight.
In November, residents protested the shutdowns when a temporary closure was announced for a sixth time.
Dr. Ralph Belle, the vice-president of medicine in Fraser Health, told CBC News the health authority is actively recruiting and noted the Mission Memorial Hospital’s emergency department is currently being renovated.
“We believe that this will be a big factor to both recruit and to retain physicians at Mission to provide the emergency services,” he said.
Interior Health announced earlier this month that four hospitals in the B.C. Interior — three of which have had periodic emergency-department closures due to staffing shortages — are starting a pilot program where emergency-care patients may be seen virtually by an off-site doctor.
