Residents rally in Eriksdale, Man. over temporary closure of town’s emergency department

ERIKSDALE, Man. -

A community in Manitoba’s Interlake region was the focus of a heated discussion on the state of rural health care.

A local advocacy group held a rally and gathering Tuesday in Eriksdale, Man. where local, provincial and First Nations leaders spoke about the impact of a temporary closure of the town’s emergency department.

Services have been suspended due to staffing issues in diagnostics.

While the ER is slated to reopen soon, community members turned out with questions about what’s being done to keep it open.

Dozens of demonstrators with signs met outside E.M. Crowe Hospital in Eriksdale for a march and delivered a message to health-care officials and the provincial government.

“What do you want? Health care,” demonstrators chanted as they walked towards the hospital. “When do you want it? Now.”

They marched right past the doors to the temporarily shuttered emergency department which wasn’t open Oct. 30 to help Lundar resident Isabelle Thorvardson’s husband when he had a stroke.

“We just drove him to Selkirk which is an hour and a half,” Thorvardson said, instead of the 20-minute drive to Eriksdale.

Elected leaders from several rural municipalities and First Nations spoke at a gathering at the Eriksdale Recreation Centre after the march. They described how the closure is impacting where residents can access diagnostic services and emergency care.

Chief Cornell McLean of Lake Manitoba First Nation which is about a 30-minute drive west of Eriksdale is among those calling for services to be restored.

“If somebody has a heart attack or anything else that happens in any one of our communities, it's ambulance service. You get Cadillac service to Winnipeg,” McLean said. “Why? Why can’t we have that service here in Eriksdale?”

Marion Ellis, CEO of the Interlake-Eastern Regional Health Authority (IERHA), said in a statement released by Shared Health Monday the ER is expected to reopen in January.

Ellis said unexpected staffing issues at E.M. Crowe Hospital in Eriksdale, combined with short-term staffing issues in diagnostics in nearby Ashern, Man., led to the temporary closure.

The IERHA said the 13-bed hospital remains open for inpatient admissions and two physicians continue to see patients five days per week at Eriksdale clinic.

Dr. Abdi Sokoro, head of provincial laboratory operations for Shared Health Diagnostic Services said two Eriksdale-based staff members are being trained in Ashern as medical lab assistants and will return to Eriksdale in 2023 which will allow the ER to reopen.

Keith Lundale, a member of the Highway 6 Advocacy Group which organized the rally, wonders how services will be sustained with a shortage of doctors in the community.

“The other question we haven’t addressed is who’s going to cover as a physician in the ED,” Lundale said.

Dr. Charles Penner, chief medical officer for the IERHA, said it’s a priority to keep one emergency department open consistently on Highway 6 in the area of Ashern and Eriksdale and a second one open when it has the staffing to do so in January.

Penner said work is ongoing to recruit an additional doctor in Eriksdale, to complement the current physician status of one full-time and one half-time doctor, following the unexpected departure of a physician.

People at the rally questioned provincial leaders on what they plan to do to bring more doctors to the area.

“So let’s get more doctors serving Lundar, Eriksdale, St. Laurent, the First Nations communities,” one man told the rally. “What are you guys going to do to help our communities out with this?”

No one from the IERHA or Shared Health answered questions at the rally.

Derek Johnson, Manitoba’s Agriculture Minister and the area MLA for Interlake-Gimli, faced sharp criticism and defended the Progressive Conservative government’s record on rural health.

“Not one single rural emergency room has been permanently closed,” Johnson said of the past seven years. “When temporary closures have happened, like the one here that we’re experiencing right now, our government demands that solutions be found and steps be taken to reopen.”

NDP leader Wab Kinew, who attended the rally with Opposition Health Critic Uzoma Asagwara and the party’s Interlake-Gimli candidate Sarah Pinsent, took aim at health care bureaucracy.

He cited Shared Health when talking about ways to redeploy resources to the frontline.

“If there’s areas at Shared Health where we could redeploy what’s being spent on bureaucracy, I’m sure in Eriksdale people are going to welcome that when they’re down lab techs and they’re worried about physicians,” Kinew said in an interview after the rally. “I’m sure people across Manitoba feel the same way.”

Thorvardson’s husband is doing well after his stroke.

“We were quite fortunate to have a very good doctor that stepped in,” she said.

While she’s been told he’d likely be treated in Winnipeg if it happens again, she’d still like to see the ER in Eriksdale reopen as soon as possible.

Health officials said updates on the resumption of ER and diagnostic services at the hospital in Eriksdale will be provided in the coming weeks.