P.E.I. rural hospitals bearing brunt of pandemic staffing crunch

Hospital closures have been increasing on P.E.I. since the pandemic onset, data gathered by CBC News shows.

That's as Health P.E.I. says it's completed a review that will determine what service in rural areas could look like in the years to come.

CBC News combed through all hospital service closures notices issued by the province over the last three years.

It found rural hospitals are the ones most impacted by said closures, and that they're mostly concentrated in two hospitals: Kings County Memorial Hospital (KCMH) in Montague, and Alberton's Western Hospital.

"It isn't a budget issue. It isn't an issue related to whether we want to provide service in one area or another," Health P.E.I. CEO Dr. Michael Gardam said.

"It's simply if we don't have enough people, we can't run the service."

About 83 per cent of the closures that have happened since 2020 were attributed to staffing issues. Around 76 per cent of those overlap with weekends and holidays. 

"It just validates that we don't have the resources right now to provide the services that we're being asked to provide," said Barbara Brookins, president of the P.E.I. Nurses' Union.

"We don't have enough nurses and we're being asked to do more and more all the time, but we can't continue to keep the services going the way they are right now."

Closures occurred 31 days of the year in 2020, either in collaborative emergency centres or emergency rooms. That amounts to about 133 hours of closed services.

In 2021, the number of days affected fell to 26 days. But the hours services weren't on offer actually jumped by nearly 50 per cent to 195 hours, as they either shut down earlier or didn't open at all.

Then in 2022, the figures were 14 times higher than the previous year: 2,727 hours over 293 days.

Many of those closures are related to physicians' and nurses' availability to work.

"We lost large numbers during the pandemic, and last year we had 33 retirees and that [didn't] recognize the ones that left right at year end," Brookins said.