On Tuesday, the mayor of Hudson’s Hope expressed frustration with Northern Health’s website, which provides status updates on emergency department closures.
As a result, Northern Health says it is changing how information is entered on the website.
Mayor Travous Quibell said Tuesday the website needed a human touch to ensure the correct information reaches those who need it the most.
When an emergency room was shut down, the website would automatically show it was expected to open the next business day. It was also happening outside regular hours in smaller communities like Hudson’s Hope, which do not have 24/7 ER services.
The issue left Hudson’s Hope residents guessing every time their health centre was hit with a diversion. As of Wednesday, Hudson’s Hope’s ER has seen 22 diversions in the past 57 days.
Northern Health says the changes will override the default setting to more clearly communicate the duration of a service interruption, or in other words, “the date on which emergency department services are expected to resume.”
The website now shows Hudson’s Hope’s ER is expected to reopen on Monday, April 20, meaning emergency services at the health centre will be unavailable for a full week.
Northern Health is trying to recruit a second family physician to bring the full-time equivalent (FTE) physician coverage to 1.3. FTE is a unit of measurement based on the number of hours worked by physicians and is used to determine staffing needs.
Northern Health says the Hudson’s Hope Health Centre is currently served by one physician working part-time, meaning it has an FTE of 0.5.
“It is important to remember that while emergency department services may be interrupted on a given day, other services such as diagnostics, community, primary care and some non-emergency urgent care/same day access can and do still occur, depending on the level of physician or nurse staffing needed,” Northern Health said.