Extended hours could solve gridlock at Saint John ER

New Brunswick Health Minister Michael Murphy has ordered the Saint John Health Authority toextend hours at St. Joseph's urgent care centre, hoping to take the pressure off the regional hospital's emergency room.

A recent coroner's inquest into the death of a 78-year-old Saint John woman at the regional hospital's emergency room in 2005 concluded the ER is much too small, and needs to be tripled in size and capacity. The regional ER is in constant gridlock, with too few beds and not enough doctors and nurses to handle the load.

Health Minister Michael Murphy says a short-term solution can be found in the city's other hospital emergency room, at St. Joseph's urgent care centre.

The St. Joseph's emergency room is supposed to be open daily between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m., but began closing at 4 p.m. last year because of staffing shortages.

Murphy wants the emergency room open 10 hours a day, seven days a week, starting Jan. 2.

Health authority chief of staff Dr. Brian Wheelock promises he'll do his best to carry out the minister's wishes.

"It takes planning. We have obligations to our physicians, and we have to work out a schedule that is satisfactory to everybody," he said. "This takes a bit of time and we haven't got that completed yet, so we can't tell you exactly when we'll be getting back to those hours."

One new doctor has been hired to work in St. Joseph's urgent care centre, taking care of sore throats, sprains, lacerations, and stabilizing patients. The health authority is also recruiting family doctors to help fill gaps in the schedule.

Wheelock says he's not sure the authority can meet the minister's deadline, but is working toward January.

"The minister has made it very clear he's promised the people of Saint John that the hours will be extended," Wheelock said. "We're quite comfortable to comply with that and he's challenged us and directed us to do it as quickly as we can. We think the earliest we can do this is the very early part of January, but we're not sure exactly when that date will be."

The province and the health authority have been slowly cutting service at St. Joseph's during the past 10 years. The facility used to be a full-service hospital, and Saint John Coun. Ivan Court says the problems at the regional are a direct result of cuts to service at St. Joseph's. "We've been telling them the crisis was going to happen and now finally they're starting to listen to that."