'If we close, people die': Rural Ontario hospitals await ER staffing certainty

Allison Jones · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 07, 2025 9:28 AM EDT | Last Updated: 3 minutes ago

Rural and bluish Ontario hospitals are anxiously awaiting word from the provincial authorities connected a programme that helps them keep exigency rooms open, aft it ended past month.

Health Minister Sylvia Jones' bureau has said it is working on a imperishable solution aft the impermanent programme expired, but in the meantime the radical who enactment to support ERs unfastened are concerned about filling those shifts.

"Because we're truthful short-staffed, we cannot tally a 24-hour emergency section without extracurricular doc support," said Ann Fenlon, the aesculapian recruitment and retention co-ordinator astatine Lady Dunn Health Centre successful Wawa, Ont.

The bluish Ontario assemblage is expected to person seven doctors who supply some household and exigency medicine, but they currently person three, Fenlon said. They person not had to adjacent their ER, but they person travel close, she said.

"We're 240 kilometres distant from the adjacent hospital," Fenlon said. "If we close, radical die."

The Temporary Locum Program pays doctors an inducement to fill exigency section shifts -- with astir of those physicians coming from other, much municipality parts of the state -- to help hospitals successful much isolated areas connected a locum, oregon temporary, basis.

Ontario archetypal established it arsenic a impermanent programme during the COVID-19 pandemic, but amid broader doc staffing challenges the agrarian and bluish hospitals person travel to trust connected it.

The Ontario Medical Association's exigency medicine section chair suggested successful a caller memo to exigency section leads that staff astatine respective hospitals person been expressing concerns astir the current limbo.

"The conception is acutely alert of the interaction the extremity of this program volition person connected staffing stableness of exigency departments across the province," Angela Marrocco wrote.

"We person done everything we tin to stress this reality to the Ministry of Health...The OMA is continuing to prosecute ways to mitigate immoderate antagonistic impacts related to timing betwixt expiry of TLP and implementation of a imperishable model."

Province moving connected a imperishable program

A spokesperson for Jones said the extremity has ever been a permanent program, and the ministry is presently in negotiations with the OMA.

"Hospitals tin proceed to docket doc sum as required arsenic we enactment with the Ontario Medical Association to transition the impermanent locum programme into a imperishable program through the caller Physician Services Agreement," Hannah Jensen said.

But the question is not whether hospitals tin proceed to try to publication doctors connected a locum basis, said Melanie Goulet, recruitment co-ordinator for wellness professionals astatine Notre-Dame Hospital successful Hearst, Ont. It's whether determination volition beryllium backing to incentivize physicians to capable those shifts.

"Obviously (we'll) proceed to publication them...We don't privation to close our emerg," she said.

But astatine the infinitesimal she isn't definite what volition hap with the doctors presently successful Hearst connected a locum ground oregon those with shifts coming up -- volition their further wage travel later, connected a retroactive basis? In her portion it amounts to astir $900 for a 12-hour shift, so without it she worries recruitment volition beryllium hampered.

"We person 1 physician, she's successful Hearst for astir two weeks...and I don't cognize what to archer her," Goulet said.

"So as much arsenic they accidental they're clear, I don't deliberation they actually understand the situation."

The ministry besides offers an Emergency Department Locum Program, but determination are antithetic criteria, and it is mostly for last-minute needs, not allowing co-ordinators to program excessively acold ahead, Goulet said. Both programs assistance ERs enactment open, she said.

The Temporary Locum Program has been extended respective times, in astatine slightest 1 lawsuit months aft it had already expired. Hospitals just privation immoderate certainty, Fenlon said.

"We've ever known that it's temporary, due to the fact that that's part of the rubric of the program," she said. "But they've had four years to fig it out."