Baddeck ER can't reopen if patients from other towns flood in, says official

The emergency department at Victoria County Memorial Hospital in Baddeck closed last fall and Nova Scotia Health says it won't be reopening anytime soon.

The province replaced the emergency department with what is being called a temporary urgent treatment centre after emergency staff were overwhelmed by patients.

During a community update at the Inverary Inn in Baddeck on Wednesday, more than 100 people were told more than half of new centre's patients are still people travelling from Cape Breton Regional Municipality to avoid long wait times there.

Brett MacDougall, Nova Scotia Health's vice-president of operations for the Eastern zone, said Baddeck's emergency department can't reopen until the influx of patients from another catchment area subsides.

"If we open it back up, it'll close again very quickly," he said. "A large number of the visits obviously that are coming up to [the] urgent care [centre] are primary care-urgent care in nature and so I think there's a lot of opportunity to improve primary care access, urgent care access in CBRM.

"If we were to hang our shingle back up as a come-anytime-of-the-day, 24/7 [emergency department], those volumes would again increase to the point where we experienced early in the summer last year and based on those volumes the team here had challenges in relation to managing all of that work."

On Wednesday, they said a working group is making improvements on recruitment and retention, but more work needs to be done. Three registered nurses are starting this spring and one new doctor is expected to arrive in Baddeck later this year.

MacDougall said recruitment is also needed in CBRM hospitals to ease the burden on Victoria County's facility.

"Once we get that other physician and we're able to evaluate whether or not that volume is able to be stabilized and controlled ... that's really part of the big problem here," he said.

"If we open back up, even with the extra physician and we get 60, 70 visits — which was happening — per day, it's going to be a problem. I think we need to get the staffing levels back up in CBRM."

Officials also delivered some good news on health care in Victoria County.

Andrew Heighton, director of integrated rural health in the Eastern zone, said Nova Scotia Health and the ambulance service launched a pilot project earlier this month to treat patients with minor health issues in their homes.

That helps keep people out of emergency departments and keeps ambulances within the community.

Glenn Cox, executive director of community rural health, said diagnostic imaging and lab tests at the hospital in Baddeck have returned to pre-pandemic levels, despite "significant" recruitment challenges in those fields.

There were a lot of questions and comments from the audience and while some expressed frustration, several said they appreciated the work the province was doing.

"I think our health system is in a lot of trouble," said Baddeck resident Margaret Gillis.

"We only have the regional hospital [in Sydney] for emergencies and that's being overwhelmed. I had a daughter that went in there the other night at eight o'clock in the evening with her son, left there at five o'clock in the morning without seeing a doctor.

"Eventually, Inverness [hospital] is going to be overwhelmed, because people are just going to ... keep on going. I've had opportunities to go to Inverness in the last month or so and I've had a good experience over there, but who knows how long that's going to last."

Resident Peter Smith said people should be grateful for what they have.

"When you look at the Third World and what we have here today, we've got nothing to complain about. All we can say is thank you to the group here tonight for doing their best to get it even better than what it is."

Some looking for reopening date

Several people wanted an answer on when the emergency department would reopen.

MacDougall said that's difficult to say. In the meantime, the province is taking other steps, such as the ambulance house call project and introducing virtual care in some locations.

"Our ultimate goal is trying to provide access to health care," he said. "I would hope that we can get back to 24/7 [emergency department] here in Baddeck and I think that's what we need to challenge ourselves to try and do."

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