Emergency rooms at 13 hospitals in rural British Columbia were closed for the equivalent of around four months in 2022, according to data analyzed by CBC News.
Only counting short-term closures — when notices are issued warning of diversions — 13 ERs serving communities with fewer than 10,000 people were closed down for a cumulative total of more than 2,900 hours.
That means residents in the affected communities lost more than 120 days of access to their local ER.
And the numbers don’t even reflect long-term closures that went into effect over the past year, including ongoing overnight closures and outright shutdowns in communities like Grand Forks.
Rural mayors say the closures will likely continue in 2023 if the province does not significantly invest in the health-care system and prioritize rural residents.
The closures have been attributed by the province to staff shortages, driven by waves of sick leaves and more lasting staff retention issues, as well as the spread of COVID-19 and high levels of respiratory illness.
The community most affected by short-term ER closures in the past year was Clearwater, a central Interior municipality with a little over 2,300 residents situated 120 kilometres north of Kamloops.
Its ER was closed 62 separate times, and it lost over a month in cumulative hours to closures.
Clearwater Mayor Merlin Blackwell says the struggles the community faced were not unique, adding that he has spoken to leaders in Grand Forks and Ashcroft about their health-care challenges.
“What’s tending to happen around the province right now is a change of service level. Instead of 24/7 care, the local health authority is tailoring their use to the number of staff they have,” he told CBC News.
Long-term reduction in services
CBC News first began verifying data related to closures in July, and looked at all hospitals in the province.
While short-term diversions and closures were a regular feature throughout the year in rural ERs, more lasting service reductions also went into effect.
New Denver Mayor Leonard Casley says the ER in the southern Interior community has been closed overnight since July.
He says the problems can be traced back to 2001, when the B.C. Liberal government of the time replaced the province’s 52 health authorities with five regional ones — Vancouver Coastal, Island, Interior, Fraser and Northern.
“I think a big part of it was the centralization of health-care,” he said. “[Health authorities] do OK in the big…
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