Hundreds of people filled the Durham Arena community hall Tuesday night for a community meeting about the reduced level of service at the Durham hospital.
They filled the seats, filled the standing room and some stood outside and listened to the meeting through speakers in the parking lot.
The South Bruce Grey Health Centre recently announced it’s planning to close the inpatient unit in Durham and relocate its ten beds to Kincardine and Walkerton.
The Durham site would be reduced to an emergent/urgent care centre, operating from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.
Members of the Save the Durham Hospital group spoke at the meeting as well as former healthcare staff, Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound Progressive Conservative MPP Rick Byers, Grey County CAO Kim Wingrove, and West Grey Mayor Kevin Eccles and Liberal MPP for Don Valley East and health critic Adil Shamji. No members of the hospital board spoke.
The South Bruce Grey Health Centre said in a release published May 3rd, the changes are a response to a critical shortage of staff, which is anticipated to intensify during the summer.
They explained, “The South Bruce Grey Health Centre (SBGHC) leadership team and board reviewed all options before coming to this decision. We do not have enough staff to keep both inpatient care and emergency services open at the Durham site. Relocating these beds allows us to protect access to urgent and emergent services in Durham.”
They say they’re committed to keeping the Durham site open. The SBGHC says it will be hosting a community webinar May 14th.
At Tuesday’s meeting, opinions varied about who is responsible for the unpopular change, with some blaming the hospital board and claiming it’s a management issue, while others blamed the provincial government for the challenges being faced by small rural hospitals.
At another SBGHC site, the Chesley Hospital emergency room hasn’t had overnight service since 2019. 24/7 service at the Durham Hospital emergency room was just cut this spring, and is now operating on a daytime schedule from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Save the Durham Hospital group member Dawn McNab tells Bayshore Broadcasting News, “I’m personally afraid of, if the inpatient beds close we have reduced emergency department hours. At what point will we even have any sort of facility in Durham?”
Dr. Mary Pillisch, family physician, Chief of the Emergency Department, and resident of the community for 31 years, does the emergency department physician scheduling. She spoke at the meeting and says, “We’re going to lose physicians that are going to keep coming to Durham. We have had a wonderful locum pool that loved to come to work at Durham. They’ve been coming for years and years, and now they’re hesitant about working in an emergency department in which there’s no inpatient beds available. When you work in an emergency department, sometimes you have a patient that needs to be kept for a few hours for further testing or observation.”
She says there’s concern from physicians that if a patient shows up too close to closing time, doctors won’t have the options for care that they rely on.
“It would have been nice to have had some sort of consultation on this matter,” Pillish adds.
Pillisch notes they had a list of about six or seven regular locum physicians and a few occasional ones. She says about three or four have asked to be taken off the list. She also notes, they typically had been working in 24 hour shifts.
Local levels of government say they were not consulted about the changes. Mayor Kevin Eccles described the situation as council being blindsided by the news, and claims SBGHC told him they’d consulted with stakeholders before coming to the decision to move the inpatient unit out of Durham. Eccles is of the opinion the municipality should have been considered a stakeholder.
Grey County CAO Kim Wingrove also noted the County would have been willing to work with the SBGHC board to come up with alternatives to the current planned changes.
The County is in the midst of a roughly $96 million 128 long-term care home redevelopment project in Durham. Wingrove says the County has written a letter to SBGHC CEO Nancy Shaw and the board “To express our deep concerns regarding the proposed service reductions at the Durham Hospital.”
Wingrove added, “This is a vital institution within our community and plays an essential role in the health and well-being of our residents.”
And: “While we understand the hospital may be facing financial and recruitment challenges and difficult decisions must be made, reducing services, especially essential ones has consequences for health outcomes of community members that we don’t feel have been fully explored.”
Wingrove also wants the Ministry of Health to come to the table to help develop a plan for the hospital.
Meanwhile, Eccles, whose council decided recently to seek legal advice on how it might prevent the service change from taking place, says he received phone calls Tuesday from Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones and from Premier Doug Ford. He says he considers that to be moving in the right direction.
MPP Rick Byers says he took notes from the speakers at Tuesday’s meeting and says he will make every effort to help the community. He told Bayshore Broadcasting News, “Operational issues are clearly management’s role and the board’s to consider. I did hear tonight some operational concerns raised and certainly I’ll reflect those to South Bruce Grey Health Centre.”
Byers notes he’s not in a position to reflect on whether those concerns are legitimate or not. He adds, “the fact that Hanover’s stayed open and Brightshores’ six hospitals have all stayed open, I think is an important point to consider. Are there things that they’re doing— I know that those are different circumstances— Brightshores has Owen Sound as a major hospital. Hanover is alone (not part of Brightshores or SBGHC) but there may be elements of that.”
Byers adds, “Four and a half years ago, pre-COVID, these closures started in Chesley. Prior to that, I believe, both Chesley and Durham were open 24/7. Why can’t we get back to that model?”
He says the provincial government has been working to alleviate the pressure of staffing shortages by supporting the opening of new medical programs and schools, enabling pharmacists to prescribe medication for more ailments and a grant that encourages healthcarte workers to stay in the communities they are educated in (Learn and Stay Grant).
Former Chief Nursing Officer for South Bruce Grey Health Centre Maureen Rydall spoke at the meeting, and called for more clarity about how the board came to its decision. She wants to know if agency nurses were contacted to fill staffing shortages, and if pandemic restrictions and vaccine requirements for staff were removed in order to reduce barriers to employment. “We should have been included in the decision.” says Rydall.
A statement issued May 3rd, by the SBGHC aimed to answer common questions about its decision. You can read it on the SBGHC website here: https://www.sbghc.on.ca/sbghc-news/response-to-community-concerns-about-the-durham-site/