Merritt councillors protest the closure of Nicola Valley Hospital's emergency room (Image credit: Zack Amin/Q101-Merritt).

By Zack Amin-Q101 Merritt

Nicola Valley Hospital

‘Someone is going to die’: City of Merritt protests emergency room closure

Sep 12, 2023 | 9:28 AM

MERRITT, B.C. — Another night, another closed emergency room (ER).

Merritt Mayor Mike Goetz, city councillors and locals all gathered in protest of the multiple closures the city has had to endure over the past few weeks, and within the year.

Interior Health (IHA) announced in an email that it would be closing Nicola Valley Hospital’s emergency department Thursday (Sept. 7) at 10 p.m., then reopening Friday (Sept. 8) at 7 a.m.

Just days later, another closure. It’s an ongoing issue that will continue unless some resolution is made.

“We have this morning (Sept. 11) met with IHA representatives with the issue of being closed twice in three days,” Goetz says. “We’ve come up with a sub-committee that will be run by the city in joint conjunction with the IHA to discuss these matters along with the nurses union. We will also be meeting with the premier. The whole idea is to support the doctors and nurses and keep this hospital open.”

Looped In

LOOPED IN WITH NIKKI OMEN: December 12, 2024

14h ago

One Man's Opinion

COLLINS: North Shore BIA working hard to develop a 'happening place'

20h ago

1000 Ways to Heal

1000 Ways to Heal: Moons

Dec 10, 2024

Protest organizer Georgia Clement feels the situation is dire with the amount of traffic that flows through Merritt.

“This has to stop,” Clement says. “We have people going by here on five highways up to 80,000 cars a day. We need to be able to reach an ER in case of a catastrophic accident.”

During the closures, emergency services were unavailable, and the health authority told patients to go to Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops.

“If you talk to the doctors around town, they will tell you how many hundreds of lives they have saved, stabilizing them before they can be transferred to another facility. Without that opportunity these people will probably die,” Clement says. “We think not only for the people of Merritt and people driving through, IHA authorities needs to pay more attention. Susan Brown (CEO of Interior Health) in particular needs to pay more attention and take this more seriously. We want no more closures. They simply need to have ‘the will’ to fix this.

“They need to have incentives in place for staff to get here. According to the local doctors this is not a doctor shortage this is a nursing shortage that IHA and Susan Brown needs to fix.“

This is the eleventh hospital closure Merritt has had to put up with in 2023.