Emergency department closure continues at Eastern Shore Memorial Hospital

N.S. ER to close for another month Nova Scotia Health says the Eastern Shore Memorial Hospital ER in Sheet Harbour, N.S., will be closed again for the month of February.

The emergency department at the Eastern Shore Memorial Hospital in Sheet Harbour, N.S., will stay closed for all of February.

This comes after Nova Scotia Health (NSH) announced on Dec. 28 that the hospital’s emergency department would be closed for January.

NSH says anyone who needs urgent medical care should call 911. Those in need of non-urgent care should call their primary care provider. There were almost 130,000 people, or 13 per cent of the population, in Nova Scotia without a primary care provider as of Jan. 1.

In Sheet Harbour, a handful of residents have been working to recruit in order to keep up staffing for the hospital’s emergency department.

Earlier this month, CTV Atlantic interviewed community member Greg Cross, who said one of Sheet Harbour’s three family doctors had been covering most shifts. Then the community recruited several locums -- fill-in physicians -- to cover the rest so that the department was staffed at least 50 to 70 per cent of the time.

But then, Cross added, that physician said he would be unavailable for emergency work in January. After that, the locums left.

NSH says it will send out a “public service advisory” if any openings at the Eastern Shore Memorial Hospital’s emergency department come up.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Heidi Petracek