Emergency department closed for 2 days in Lillooet, B.C.

CBC News

· Posted: Mar 10, 2025 9:40 PM EDT | Last Updated: 4 hours ago

The Lillooet Hospital exigency section was closed Monday owed to a staffing shortage, and Interior Health says it volition stay closed until Wednesday morning.

"We've been incapable to unafraid a doc to screen our exigency section successful Lilooet for the adjacent 48 hours," said Karen Cooper, the enforcement manager of objective operations for Interior Health, successful a Monday interview.

With the ER closed, residents are being told to telephone the ambulance if they request emergency care, which can transport them to an ER successful different community.

"If it's a life-threatening emergency, it's ever 911 whether we're unfastened oregon whether we're connected work diversion [and closed]," Cooper said.

The infirmary ER has already had to adjacent astir 2 twelve times since July 2024, according to CBC News tracking. 

The closure is 1 of galore successful a state that's facing a doc and nursing shortage.

The wellness section recommends Lilooet residents needing emergency attraction caput to Royal Inland Hospital successful Kamloops, which is astir a 170-kilometre thrust away. Cooper said she recommends Kamloops arsenic the ER section determination is large, and the infirmary has galore specialists.

Cooper said schedulers bash their champion to effort to bring in much doctors from retired of municipality erstwhile there's a shortage truthful that they don't person to adjacent the ER. However, they don't ever succeed.

"On a idiosyncratic level, there's ne'er going to not beryllium a consciousness that you've fto a assemblage down by not being capable to mitigate a spread successful service," she said.

Ian Tait, a spokesperson for the Ambulance Paramedics of B.C., said its members are progressively being asked to capable that gap. ER closures successful agrarian and distant areas are becoming much common, helium added.

As a result, helium says paramedics' enactment is harder.

"Our members are stepping up each the clip to transport these patients a batch longer," Tait said.

"Usually, you tin spell to the section infirmary to stabilize [a patient] and get everything started. So it decidedly does adhd unit to the ambulance work arsenic good arsenic to transport times and past returning arsenic well," helium said.