Lake of the Woods District Hospital says it’s in danger of closing its Emergency Department if the provincial government doesn’t act soon.
Cheryl O’Flaherty is the President and Executive Officer of the hospital and says their seen their numbers balloon, while the number of doctors working in the ER is shrinking.
“The reality is we’ve gone from 20 physicians working in the emergency department in 2022, down to 9 this month and they all work part-time because they’re working in other areas of the system,” O’Flaherty said in a press conference on Friday.
O’Flaherty adds they’ve seen their numbers visiting the local ER balloon in the past year.
“Our volume of patients has escalated over the last year. We had approximately 15,000 emergency department visits in 2023-24, and we gone up to 20,000 in the recent year, so it’s gone up 5,000 patients in one year.”
O’Flaherty adds closing the ER is a last resort, because the closest Emergency Room is two hours away, making timely access to medical care an impossibility.
