Baie Verte residents rally against emergency room closures

Baie Verte emergency room has been closed since April 29

A child in Baie Verte had a severe allergic reaction, but the emergency room was closed, and it was almost two hours before they received medical attention.

That’s just one of the stories told by a resident on Tuesday, June 6, when fire chief Kyle Payne offered the microphone to anyone who wanted to speak at the rally he organized.

“If people don’t fight for it, it’s going to fall down around them,” Payne said.

Since 4 p.m. on April 29, the emergency room in Baie Verte has been closed because there is no doctor available to work there.

People in the area are scared, said Payne.

“It’s going to force people to leave here,” Payne said. “The kids are our future and if they don’t have health care to help them get through, we don’t have anything, really.”

When the closures began happening in 2022, they were few and far between, Payne said. But as he began collecting data from Central Health, he didn’t like the trend he saw unfolding.

For the 12 months of 2022, emergency services were closed for approximately 60 days, or 1,457 hours, in total.

In the first three months of 2023, the total was already half of the entire previous year, at 760 hours, or approximately 31 days.

PATIENT DIES

Recently, the fire department was called to assist paramedics with CPR. That patient died and it’s because there was no doctor, Payne said.

“There’s 5,200 people here on the peninsula and we’re having to travel,” Payne said. “If Springdale is lucky enough to be open, that’s an hour away, but we’re still putting that extra strain on their health care. Grand Falls is 177 kilometres away. But all the smaller places in central are getting diverted to Grand Falls. So, you can only imagine what the strain is like at their hospital.”

He has been corresponding with Central Health and the government, but the response is always the same: they are working on a recruitment and retention plan.

“The planning stages should be over now – it’s time for action,” Payne wrote in a letter sent to all levels of government and Central Health management.

Saltwire sent a request to the Department of Health and Community Services for an interview, but was advised Health Minister Tom Osborne was unavailable on Tuesday.

GUT-WRENCHING STORIES

Jerry Earle, president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Public and Private Employees (NAPE), attended the rally and said the stories from residents are gutwrenching.

Health-care workers are also feeling the toll, he said.

“They’ve been on diversion now for many weeks, so it’s taking the ambulance out of the community and now they’re really stressed about what may happen,” Earle said.

The closures have a ripple effect on other areas like Grand Falls-windsor, considering ambulances and patients will be diverted there, he said.

“They’ve now had an increase of … patients from the full geographical area,” Earle said. “When you listen to EMS staff, nursing staff, everybody, they’re really concerned.”

NO LONGER A ‘PENDING CRISIS’

Since 2016 or 2017, NAPE has been raising the alarm about the “pending crisis” in health care, Earle said.

“And here we are in the crisis we were forecasting six years ago,” Earle said. “I believe if some things had started to be addressed back then, it wouldn’t be quite as bad as it is today.”

When asked by Opposition health critic Paul Dinn on May 25 if 500 days of emergency room closures around the province since the beginning of 2023 sounds like progress, Osborne said they don’t measure things by what happened in the past, they measure them by what they’re doing.

“I’ve been informed just this week … that the numbers of closures in our Category B (rural) emergency departments … have been stabilized,” Osborne said at the time. “We are making improvements. We have a number of recruitment initiatives in place. We are going to be introducing other initiatives to help ensure that the (rural) emergency departments stay open. We have a virtual RFP … that has been awarded.

“We’ll continue working on the issue to ensure that every Newfoundlander and Labradorian has the access they deserve.”

HEALTH CARE NOT OPTIONAL

Health care is not optional, Progressive Conservative Interim Leader David Brazil stated in a June 6 news release.

“When someone is in their time of need, they don’t have two hours to make the drive to Grand Falls-windsor to be assessed,” Brazil said. “The Liberal government makes promises, but the stories around our province continue to get worse. (They are) ignoring the needs of rural and remote parts of Newfoundland and Labrador. These communities need access to health care, not locked emergency room doors.”

The story is all too familiar to rural areas like Whitbourne, New-wes-valley, St. Lawrence, Harbour Breton, Bell Island and beyond, said Paul Dinn.

“If the Liberal government is making closed emergency rooms in rural Newfoundland and Labrador their policy, then they should say so,” Dinn said. “It’s frustrating to see promises made, but not delivered by this government. The Liberals claim health care is their top priority, but locked doors and two-hour drives for health care show a lack of action that is harming the people of our province.”