Vancouver Island emergency room latest to face temporary closure due to staff shortage

This story is part of Situation Critical, a series from CBC British Columbia reporting on the barriers people in this province face in accessing timely and appropriate health care.

The emergency room at Port Alberni's West Coast General Hospital (WCGH) on Vancouver Island could be closed through much of August and September due to ongoing staffing shortages, CBC News has learned.

An employee at WCGH, speaking on condition of anonymity, warns the ER could be closed for eight-hour periods a day if a solution is not found to fill shifts at the hospital. While the ER is currently operating, the employee said it has narrowly avoided closures in July.

The ER in Port Alberni services a town of over 18,000, and typically receives between 60 and 80 visits per day.

The employee, a health professional, said if the ER does close, people would need to travel an hour and 15 minutes to Nanaimo, or nearly two hours to Tofino for emergency care — resulting in a three-hour period when an ambulance would be unavailable for other calls in the community.

The Port Alberni Fire department and the police detachment said they've been notified of the potential disruption. 

Island Health said in a statement there are currently no planned disruptions at WCGH, and that a closure would occur "as a last resort [...] after every possible mitigation strategy is explored and exhausted."

"Island Health is actively working to ensure the availability of emergency services in the Alberni Valley region and beyond," the statement read in part.

An ER closure in Port Alberni would be the latest in a series of temporary ER shutdowns in small communities.

Earlier in the spring, emergency rooms in Port McNeill — in the island's north region — as well as the province's Interior and northeast closed on short notice because physicians were not available to fill shifts.

As recently as Monday, the ER in Merritt's Nicola Valley Hospital in the Interior closed on short notice after an ER physician called in sick. It re-opened at 8 a.m. the next day.

Interior Health directed people needing emergency care to access Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, or Kelowna General Hospital, about an hour to an hour-and-a-half drive away.

Speaking at an unrelated press conference on Monday, Health Minister Adrian Dix said he was aware of the closure in Merritt, but did not comment directly on potential closures in Port Alberni.

"We're going to continue doing what we've been doing — which is hiring and building resources out in our health-care system," he said.