Delta’s mayor says B.C.’s health-care system is broken after the city’s emergency department closed overnight with little notice.
“At 6 o’clock last night, approximately, I received a call from the administrator here at Delta Hospital that they were having to close the emergency department due to a shortage of physicians due to an illness,” Mayor George Harvie said.
“This is the third closure we’ve had this year, and (we’re) very upset over it, and we only had an hour’s notice.”
Harvie said he is concerned about what is happening within Fraser Health, as Delta also has the highest wait times for ambulances responding to life-threatening events.
Nurses were on-site at the hospital overnight to support walk-ins and help transfer those with urgent needs to other hospitals, but Harvie said this is the third closure the emergency room has faced this year after back-to-back closures in February.
The emergency room reopened on Tuesday at 6:30 a.m.
Harvie said another issue in Delta is the lack of urgent and primary care centres. He said they have not received word from Fraser Health if any will be coming.
“It’s not fair for people in the province who pay taxes, expect a good medical system, to not know whether they’re going to have the support of an emergency department when they need it,” Harvie said.
Delta’s emergency department was not the only closure over the long weekend.
The emergency department at South Okanagan General Hospital in Oliver is closed until noon on Tuesday due to staffing shortages.
Meanwhile, the emergency department at 100 Mile District General Hospital was closed until 8 p.m. on Monday.
The emergency departments at several hospitals in B.C. were also closed for various lengths of time, including Prince Rupert, Quesnel, Fort Nelson, Burns Lake, Mission and Clearwater.
All of them have since reopened.
Harvie said he has penned a letter to the provincial government about the health-care challenges and needs, but has yet to receive a response.
“It should have been addressed a long time ago, but it’s urgent that it needs to be addressed now,” he said.
“Again, we have no urgent primary care centres to take the load off of the emergency department. We have right now an overtaxing on our emergency department to the people coming in because they don’t have doctors.”
Global News has reached out to the province and Fraser Health for comment.