Delta mayor reacts to overnight ER closure

Another overnight closure of the Delta Hospital’s emergency department has the city’s Mayor furious with the health authority.

Fraser Health announced the service interruption just one hour before it was set to begin at 7 p.m. Monday, stating it would ensure all patients already in the ER could be seen before the doctor ended their shift at 1:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The health authority says it was unable to staff the department due to an “unexpected physician illness.”

The ER reopened around 6:30 a.m.

Delta Mayor George Harvie tells 1130 NewsRadio he’s “frustrated” after the third closure this year. He says being given just one hour’s notice isn’t good enough.

“We need something more consistent insofar as ensuring the people in Delta have the ability to go to our emergency room and receive the proper services. But this on-the-spot closures is just something that is really intolerable,” said Harvie.

He’s calling on the provincial government to fix the situation, adding that there are 115,000 people in Delta, and it’s not fair to his tax-paying constituents.

“We do everything possible to make sure that we’re supplementing them with equipment to whatever the doctors need. This community goes out and funds it. But here we are. We can’t even have assurances that the emergency room is going to be open. So I’m very disappointed and we will do everything I can, as mayor and along with my council, to ask the provincial government to fix this. And they shouldn’t just fix it for Delta. They need to fix it for every emergency room in our province.”

The closure comes after a series of ER closures in rural B.C. in recent months and another overnight closure of Mission Memorial Hospital’s ER Sunday night.

Harvie says it’s “unacceptable” to be understaffed with just one doctor falling ill.

“You wouldn’t run a regular business this way. And this is about life and death,” said Harvie.

“This is a system that’s broken, and the province needs to fix it.”