Southern Health-Santé Sud recently changed the hours of operation for the emergency department at the Altona Community Memorial Health Centre.
As of Dec. 8, the ER is open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. seven days a week, including stat holidays.
The RHA is asking the public to continue to help manage the stress put on the department by only using it during the designated hours for the purpose it was designed for, which is to manage acute and serious health care needs.
All less serious health care needs should be addressed through the Altona Clinic or other clinics in the surrounding area.
Southern Health-Santé Sud Chief Medical Officer Dr. Denis Fortier says the reduction in emergency hours is largely due to the challenges in health human resources.
“Previously we had some challenges in our nursing resources. Currently, and for a while now, we’ve been experiencing challenges with physician health human resources in Altona, but also throughout the region and in fact throughout the province.”
He adds that this is a provincial issue that is affecting all rural centres.
“The last time we checked, we had 24 physician vacancies in our region, and we required up to an additional 21 physicians to make up for the increase in population and demands. So, we are about 45 physicians short for our entire region, and so that impacts many communities, including Altona.”
He says the issue has been slowly growing, with the pandemic being a large driving factor in the shortages in every sector of the health system.
“I don’t think we’ve ever experienced this type of challenge in Southern Health-Santé Sud as we are currently facing.”
If you get sick after hours in Altona, you’ll have to look at other options. According to Fortier, some of those include reassessing just how sick you are, and whether you might be able to see your physician the following day.
It also involves potentially heading to other emergency departments, such as Boundary Trails Health Centre.
“There are also a number of virtual care options that are being presented into the health system now,” he added.
Fortier noted that Altona is not unique in this situation.
“We have had to reduce hours of operation in the emergency departments in pretty much all our community hospitals across the region over the last couple of years. We’re really hoping this is temporary and we have plans to expand once the human resource challenges resolve.”
He says about 80 to 85 per cent of all people who visit the emergency department do so during those hours between 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
“So, we are going to miss some who come to the emergency department primarily from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Once we get beyond 8 p.m., the traffic in the emergency departments reduces significantly. We try to target the times of the day where we can maximize the benefits of having the emergency department open, even if it is reduced.”
December is adding to the challenge, especially with people not being available.
“We are hopeful and optimistic that we will return to the previous hours of eight hours Monday to Thursday, and 12 hours of operation on Friday, Saturday and Sunday in January 2024,” Fortier said.
Meanwhile, he says Southern Health Santé-Sud has been beating the bushes looking for family physicians, but so is everybody else.
“We are in extreme competition with every community in this province, and every province in this country. But we are doing what we can. There are a number of different projects going on to try to find physicians.”
Some of those projects include sponsoring internationally trained physicians to get extra training to become oriented and familiar in the Canadian system and the Manitoba Health system.
“That takes about a year, and there’s costs related to that,” Fortier noted. “We sponsor three on average every year. This year, we saw this coming, so we sponsored six, and they’ll be coming out of the program in August and September 2024.”
When there are no physicians to find, they have to wait for the graduating classes in the summer.
They also lean on an organization called Canadian Health Labs for recruiting doctors near and far.
“They’ve been contracted to find 150 family doctors for Manitoba, of which 15 are designated for Southern Health,” Fortier said, adding the RHA is also working with provincial recruiters who attend career fairs throughout the province and country.
Last September in Steinbach, the RHA hosted 100 family medicine residents from the University of Manitoba and highlighted the opportunities, and the reasons people should choose to work in rural Manitoba.
“The university is increasing the number of family physicians that are being trained and the number of internationally trained physicians that can go through the program, so they’re going from 20 a year to 30 a year,” Fortier said.
For the international training positions, if it all falls into place, within the next couple of years. they will have gone from training 100 doctors to 140 to 150 a year.
“That doesn’t guarantee that these doctors end up becoming family doctors or want to work in rural Manitoba. But it’s still better than before.”
But these are very long term and slow processes, Fortier acknowledges.
“There’s not a lot of answers today, unfortunately. What we need to do today is protect the physicians that are currently working so that we don’t crush them under the weight of all the duties and responsibilities that are put upon them. We have to be careful to protect their health and their ability to offer services. One of those things is occasionally reducing the hours of operation in the emergency department so they can catch their breath.”
Fortier thanks communities for their patience and understanding.
“We’re trying to balance the needs of the population but also the needs of the people who provide service, and it’s not always easy.”
