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HUNDREDS of emergency rooms in Canada have been closed so far this year, making it more difficult to receive care.
A recent incident involving three teens highlighted the severity of the closures and the dire impact they’re having on communities across Canada.
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“We are playing Russian roulette here,” Central Huron Mayor Jim Ginn told CTV News.
“Sooner or later something is going to happen here, and it’s going to cost someone their life. It came close this time.”
Ginn was referring to a July 30 incident involving three teens who were stabbed at a Sweet 16 in Ontario.
The teens were driven to an emergency room about a mile away – but it closed after 6pm.
They then had to be taken to another hospital more than 12 miles away.
“That’s why we need as many emergency rooms as possible because we have big distances to other hospitals in other municipalities,” Ginn continued.
“We are somewhat fortunate in Clinton that Goderich and Seaforth aren’t too far away.”
A high number of temporary emergency room closures have been reported across the country so far this year.
CTV News found at least 1,284 instances of a hospital’s emergency room being shut for hours or days.
These closures were typically in rural communities.
“There is absolutely no doubt that this is the most closures we have ever seen,” rural emergency physician Alan Drummond told the news outlet.
“Clearly, nobody’s taking this seriously enough.
“These kinds of closures mean that government has failed to meet their end of the social contract for Canadians in terms of providing them assured access to quality emergency care.”
Peter Bergmanis of the Ontario Health Coalition said the healthcare collapse – specifically in nursing – began during the Covid pandemic.
“This is going to lead to a tragedy beyond anything we can comprehend,” Bergmanis told CTV News.
“While this is a fortunate story in the end, that all these gentlemen actually received care and it was timely enough for them to go to another hospital, I can only imagine a more serious trauma and there is no other options,” he said of the three teens.
Bergmanis also spoke of the crisis at large.
“We’re looking at 158 ER closures, predominantly all in rural Ontario because they are a decade behind all these hospitals being underfunded,” he said.
“These communities built their hospitals over generations.
“We are begging the Ford government to get off those $22billion that they are sitting on and fund these hospitals.
“They need to automatically flood the resources into these rural communities.”
