ER pressures fuel new fear

Digby General Hospital’s emergency room—already under stress—will soon be feeling extra pressure, warn area health officials.

Growing delays in the emergency room-outpatients department are expected to discourage many people from seeking medical help until their condition reaches a crisis, worries Barbara Johnson, spokesperson for South West Health. It’s a concern shared by Judy LeBlanc, clinical site manager of the Digby hospital.

Extra pressure is coming from the departure at the end of this month of Dr. Roy Harding who has confirmed June 28 as a finish date as deputy chief of medical staff.

Harding will also wrap up his office practice by July 1, although he has informed South West Health that he will be following up on some testing results until the end of July. He will not be seeing patients after July 1.

The ER has suffered weekly shutdowns each Friday since last autumn, and has relied on locums (fill-in physicians) to provide weekend coverage.

Harding’s closure of practice removes one of the few local doctors participating in the rotation of ER physicians. Another, Dr. Paul Carmichael, is withdrawing because of her pregnancy, which leaves only Dr. Marek Bander in the rotation.

Even more pressure on ER staff will come as workers take summer vacation,

Johnson said she isn’t sure if other doctors are going to step up to the plate to cover some of the ER hours.

She is acutely aware that there are more than 2,300 patients on Harding’s active list, and most of them will be unable to find a replacement physician in the area.

Many of those patients will have to turn to the ER-outpatients department for prescription renewal or what Johnson calls routine medical services. She said South West Health is looking for alternatives to such emergency support.

“There are probably ways that can be done,” she said, suggesting that the it is within the scope of a nurse practitioner to prescribe certain drugs, order certain tests, run well women and well men clinics.

Johnson emphasized that emergency rooms treat first those patients most in need of medical care. That means people waiting for tests or prescription refills may wind up sitting hour after hour.

She knows many people with minor medical ailments will instead resist visiting the hospital ER. “They’ll say, ‘Oh my goodness. I don’t want to sit in the ER.’ That’s a fear for us.”

At DGH, site administrator LeBlanc agreed and said the result will be more people showing up with serious problems that could have been caught earlier.

Both Johnson and LeBlanc say they spent several years themselves without a family physician, and knows it is no fun.

For others with more pressing medical concerns, the problems in Digby’s primary care system are reaching a head. More than one person has reported that the nearest family physician that may accept new patients is in Windsor, and others are already considering a move into Halifax with its broader base of physicians.

South West Health is also considering implications of patients who may travel to other area emergency rooms if Digby’s waiting times grow too lengthy. That happened in Yarmouth when it had similar problems, said Johnson, but the loss of a Shelburne physician may create pressure on Yarmouth’s ER from that area as well.