Lorne ER closing March 15

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This article was published 11/03/2021 (1882 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Another emergency room in rural Manitoba is on the chopping block.

A spokesperson for Southern Health-Santé Sud said the Lorne Memorial Hospital’s emergency department will be shut down after March 15.

Both physicians at the small hospital, located in the community of Swan Lake within the Municipality of Lorne, are leaving after that date.

The municipality is approximately 140 kilometres southeast of Brandon and roughly 35 kilometres northeast of Crystal City.

This will also affect the primary care clinics in Somerset and Swan Lake as well as the emergency department at Rock Lake Health District Hospital, where those two physicians provided on-call emergency coverage.

The plan for Lorne Memorial Hospital is to institute a nurse practitioner-led care model for medical care.

According to an email from the Southern Health spokesperson, “Most patients visiting Lorne Memorial Hospital for same-day care are unlikely to be affected by the transition to a low-acuity urgent care department.”

They stated that 90 per cent of all patients seen at the hospital’s emergency department over the past two years were considered non-urgent or less urgent cases that could be treated by a nurse practitioner.

Recruitment of three additional nurse practitioners for the facility is currently underway, with all other services at the hospital being maintained in the changeover.

Southern Health stated that most of the inpatients at the hospital are waiting to be placed in a personal care home or are receiving palliative or respite care, and those services will continue with the same bed count as before.

Additionally, they stated that many cases with higher-acuity needs are often cared for elsewhere than at the hospital.

Craig Soldier, a resident of Swan Lake First Nation, told the Sun on Wednesday that while he’s glad nurse practitioners will be maintaining services, he’s concerned about what this could mean for locals in emergencies.

“Ambulance service basically anywhere in our area is minimum 20 minutes before arrival,” he said. “And then you look at the 10- to 15-minute assessment or whatever it’s going to take and then instead of going back to our hospital, it may take another 25-30 minutes to arrive at another emergency room. When you talk about strokes and heart attacks, the first hour is the most important. You know what, the first hour is wasted already waiting for your ambulance and then riding your ambulance to the hospital.”

In an email to the Sun, a spokesperson from the office of Health Minister Heather Stefanson stated they believed the move would stabilize services in the region.

“The recruitment and retention of staff is an ongoing challenge dating back decades in Manitoba, particularly in rural communities,” they wrote.

“Thousands of Manitobans regularly receive care from nurse practitioners, who are highly capable of providing many of the same services as physicians. We have confidence that the plan the region has developed will stabilize health services in the area over the long term while providing a more consistent and predictable level of care that is less vulnerable to staffing disruptions.”

Manitoba NDP Leader Wab Kinew told the Sun via phone on Wednesday that his party has been hearing concerns from people in and around Swan Lake about what this will mean for their health care going forward.

“Any time you’re forcing people to drive further or to change what they’re used to, I think those concerns always come forward,” Kinew said. “For us, beyond what we’ve been hearing for the folks in the area, for a long time we’ve been raising the alarms about phase two of the government’s plans to cut health care and to consolidate health care in rural Manitoba.

The opposition leader said he respects nurse practitioners and the important role they play in Manitoba’s health-care system, but a community losing doctors always raises concerns.

“Health care is always something you want in your hometown or home area, so you can enjoy a good quality of life,” he said. “This will definitely have an impact on where patients go for treatment in the broader area and as a result, you are going to see more people heading to the remaining emergency rooms. We saw that in Winnipeg after they closed ERs here … it led to chaos in the remaining emergency rooms.”

The reeve of the Municipality of Lorne, Aurel Pantel, declined to comment on the situation, saying that discussions on the topic are still underway.

The Sun was unable to reach Swan Lake First Nation Chief Jennifer Meeches for comment.

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