Glace Bay emergency department to be open only four days in June

The emergency department at the hospital in Glace Bay, N.S., will only be open for four days in June.

The Nova Scotia Health Authority says Glace Bay's ER will be open on Monday, Tuesday and Friday next week, from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.

It will also be open 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Wednesday, June 26.

The emergency department is closed for the rest of the month.

Health authority spokesman Greg Boone said the closure is due to doctors being unavailable to cover emergency shifts in Glace Bay.

Strain on the regional hospital

Community hospitals in Glace Bay, North Sydney and New Waterford have been hit regularly with temporary closures, but not usually for almost an entire month.

That has put a strain on the regional hospital in Sydney, where the emergency department must remain open around the clock.

About 30 family doctors in Cape Breton recently withdrew inpatient hospital coverage in a dispute with the province over pay.

That means any of their patients requiring hospital care now have to be admitted to the regional hospital, where they are followed by staff doctors known as hospitalists.

That has also put pressure on the regional, which was put on an overcapacity alert last week due to a lack of beds in the inpatient and ER departments.

Boone said the ER closures in Glace Bay next month are unrelated to the issue of inpatient coverage.

He said not all family doctors are qualified for emergency medicine, and those that are may have a variety of reasons for declining ER shifts.