Community pushing back against overnight ER closure

Nathan Rhody has lost confidence in the South Bruce Grey Health Centre, now that two hospitals under their leadership have closed their Emergency Rooms from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.

“This isn’t month three or six, this is month 27, and now they’re taking the services away from our neighbouring hospital in Walkerton, and further restricting our services in Chesley. It’s very, very concerning,” he says.

Rhody, a former South Bruce Grey Health Centre (SBGHC) board member, says the overnight closure of the Walkerton hospital’s emergency room last month, coupled with the overnight ER closure at the Chesley hospital that started in Sept. 2019, both due to nursing shortages, shows that the four-hospital network isn’t functioning properly.

“We have nearby health-care partners in Grey Bruce Health Services that run six hospitals and 24-hour emergency rooms at all of their locations, so other hospital networks seem to be making things work, yet SBGHC seems to be falling short,” says Rhody.

The president and CEO of the SBGHC says since the Walkerton and Chesley hospital cuts were announced, they’ve enacted a nursing retention and recruitment plan to hire more agency nurses, internationally trained nurses, casual nurses and to hire midwives to help out in Walkerton’s birthing centre.

“We’ve have good uptake with the agency nurses. We’ve had two start already and two more are starting this week and next. For internationally trained nurses, we’ve had a large number of applicants and will be interviewing those applicants over the next week," says Michael Barrett.

"And on the casual nurse front, we’re modifying the language in our collective agreement as we speak, and hope to be posting for those positions, shortly," he added.

The Municipality of Brockton, which encompasses Walkerton, has started a third-party review of the recent emergency room cuts.

A meeting is taking place this Saturday between community members, SBGHC leadership and MPPs Lisa Thompson and Bill Walker.

“The future of our hospital is very much in doubt,” says Rhody, now that Chesley no longer accepts inpatients, and only has a 12-hour emergency room.

Barrett says, “Our commitment is to four strong viable hospitals and at those four sites we want to have the full scope of services available prior to these reductions. Our intent, and we’ve attached urgency to this, is to make sure we get the Walkerton and Chesley hospital re-opened to full service.”