The South Bruce Grey Health Centre facility at Chesley. (supplied image)
The emergency department at the Chesley Hospital is shut down for the next two months.
South Bruce Grey Health Centre issued a news release Thursday evening to announce the decision, saying a critical shortage of nurses will force the full closure of the Chesley emergency room until Friday, Dec. 2.
The inpatient unit, community lab collections and diagnostic imaging services in Chesley will remain open and operational.
The hospital organization says active recruitment continues for nurses, but the pool is very limited in the current environment across the province.
“The health human resources shortage in the province is very challenging for all health care organizations. There are simply not enough licensed health care providers in the system – nurses, doctors, medical lab techs, etc. – to continue to provide the level of service that has been provided to date,” says SBGHC president & CEO Michael Barrett. “For nursing specifically, the shortage is being amplified by the incentive to work as an agency nurse.”
South Bruce Grey Health Centre says it has relied on the use of agency nurses to fill vacant shifts in order to keep services operational. Staffing agencies provide healthcare organizations with nurses for short- and long-term placements, and then bill hospitals for it.
In a statement, South Bruce Grey Health Centre says the approach is not an ideal or preferred solution, as agency nurses are costly and not committed to its sites.
“In addition, our nurses do not feel valued when the agency nurses are making more money for doing the same work,” a release explains. “SBGHC would much rather be putting the extra cost spent on agency nurses into the pockets of our own staff, who have worked tirelessly to support our organization and our communities. The unfortunate reality is that without using agency nurses at this time, the organization would be looking at additional closures and reductions in service.”
South Bruce Grey Health Centre says during the temporary closure period of the Chesley ER it plans to evaluate the level of service that can be safely provided at all of its hospital sites in the longer term, “with the staffing resources available, recognizing the provincial health human resource shortage will remain a challenge for the foreseeable future.”
In addition to Chesley, South Bruce Grey Health Centre also operates hospitals in Durham, Walkerton and Kincardine.
South Bruce Grey Health Centre has long struggled to maintain regular hours at the Chesley Hospital’s emergency department due to staffing issues. It had an extended overnight closure in effect from September 2019 until June 2022, when South Bruce Grey Health Centre moved to resume 24/7 service.
Over the summer, there were sporadic overnight closures of the Chesley emergency department and then in September a decision was made by SBGHC to close it overnight indefinitely.
“There have been multiple times over the last 3 weeks where the (emergency department) had to close for several full days on short notice due to the overall shortage of nurses,” a statement from SBGHC explains. “These short notice decisions are not a sustainable approach for our staff or the communities we serve, and a further reduction in service is necessary for the safety of our patients and staff.”