Emergency Department may Close some Shifts

The Emergency Department at the Strathroy Middlesex General Hospital (SMGH) site of the Middlesex Hospital Alliance (MHA) may close intermittently during the summer - starting as early as the first week of July - because of a shortage of physicians.

"Closing our Emergency Department, even temporarily, is not a choice that this hospital board wants to make. Our directors, physicians and staff members are concerned about the affect a closure may have on access to care in our community. We will make the decision to close only when we have exhausted all of the other options for providing quality care. However, it is important for the public to be aware that there may be intermittent closure of the Emergency at SMGH," Mike Mazza, CEO of MHA, says. SMGH saw 28,000 visits to the Emergency Department last year.

The hospital will endeavor to alert the public to any ED closing with appropriate notice. "We'll use our web site and local media, including radio stations, to let people know the dates and times of any temporary closures," Mazza says. The MHA web site address is http://www.mhalliance.on.ca. People needing emergency services will be redirected to other ED sites in the region, such as London Health Sciences Centre in London, Bluewater Health in Sarnia and Petrolia, South Huron Hospital in Exeter and Four Counties Health Services (FCHS) in Newbury.

Emergency service at the FCHS site, a partner in the Middlesex Hospital Alliance, is not affected by the current physician shortage. "The FCHS ED remains open 24/7," Mazza says.

According to Dr. Paul Ferner, Chief of Staff at SMGH, the shortage of physicians available to staff the ED is caused by a number of factors. For instance, after many decades of service in the ED in Strathroy, three local doctors are resigning from their emergency duties. Additionally, other physicians are scaling back their emergency department work and spending more time in private practice. In the longer term, this can have a positive effect on Emergency service at the hospital because seeing patients in their offices reduces non-emergency patient visits to the ED. However, all of these factors, combined with summer vacation schedules, have resulted in a number of vacant shifts in the ED for the months of July and August.

"In the past, we have relied on our family practice physicians to cover all the shifts in ED - 24/7, 365 days a year," Dr. Ferner says. And, while new doctors coming to the community usually work in the hospital in some capacity, they don't necessarily work in the ED. "We don't have a shortage of doctors, just a shortage of ED doctors," Dr. Ferner says.

"We have a strategy to recruit five full time physicians who will participate in emergency coverage," Mazza says, "We are leaning toward doctors who have special training in Emergency. However, summer is a challenging time to recruit and we are not alone in our need for these types of doctors. There is a critical shortage of emergency physicians across the Province of Ontario. In our own Local Health Integrated Network, Grey Bruce Health Services with six sites, is also putting a plan in place to cope with possible temporary ED closures this summer," Mazza says.

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Emergency Department may Close some Shifts

Emergency Department may Close some Shifts