Community angst over surprise changes to Durham hospital

After losing all of its inpatient beds and seeing its emergency room hours cut earlier this year, the Durham hospital is finally getting some good news. New healthcare services are coming to the rural hospital.

“It’s an investment for our communities, providing access to mental health services and addictions closer to home is extremely important,” said President and CEO of the South Bruce Grey Health Centre, Nancy Shaw.

Mental health and addiction services, featuring counselling services and psychiatric clinics, will soon be coming to Durham’s Hospital. The partnership between the South Bruce Grey Health Centre (SBGHC), Brightshores Health System (based in Owen Sound) and the Grey-Bruce branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association was announced last week.

While no one in the community is ready to turn down the important program, it’s not the healthcare services they were asking for. Community members desperately want the return of a full-time emergency room and return of all 10 inpatient beds, not a mental health clinic.

“Mental health care is definitely important, but I think the potential for disaster with losing much of our hospital services outweighs that. You know, it's a longer ambulance ride to an ER, and now that we've got blizzard conditions that could make it even almost impossible at times to get to an ER,” said Save the Durham Hospital Community Committee Member, Jerry Grant.

“What it doesn't do is make sure that it's going to be functioning as a hospital with 24/7 emergency care. And, you know, some hospital beds that we can use through this community, and healthcare that is local. That, I guess, is the concerning part of it,” said Municipality of West Grey Mayor, Kevin Eccles.

The municipality is taking the South Bruce Grey Health Centre to court over the reduction in hours of the emergency room at Durham’s hospital, which took effect in March, and the relocation of the community’s only inpatient beds to neighbouring hospitals, which happened in June. Both reductions in service were described as necessary, due to a lack of nurses, said SBGHC management.

“How do we get the staffing for this new program if we didn't have staffing to just even operate it as a hospital?” questioned Eccles.

While staffing the new addiction and mental health services in Durham hasn’t yet been finalized, Shaw said the new program isn’t taking the place of Durham’s inpatient beds, as they continue recruitment efforts to try and return Durham’s hospital to what it was less than a year ago.

“So, the space where the beds existed is still there. That certainly is more of an office space that we have renovated to support outpatient services,” Shaw said.

“Our ER services continue. They are in reduced hours, and they are straight days at this time. But the addition of outpatient mental health services at the Durham site would not replace our inpatient beds by any means. It's certainly a service that is provided and the location is going to be located at Durham, but it's a geography perspective, and the infrastructure's there to support the location of outpatient mental health services.”

Grant added that any community would welcome more mental health care services.

“But I feel Durham is sacrificing too much. We're losing too much,” he said.