Community Hospital to take on new role

Community Hospital in O'Leary saw its emergency department significantly downgraded as part of a P.E.I.-wide review of health care Tuesday, but it also made some gains.

'I feel we've gained more today than what we've lost.' — community chair Nancy Wallace

Community leaders are divided on what the changes mean for the hospital.

Until the release of the report, written by B.C.-based consultants Corpus Sanchez, Allison Ellis was chair of the Community Hospital board. That board, along with four other hospital boards, was dissolved.

"I guess we were all fired at 12 o'clock today," Ellis told CBC News Tuesday.

The province is appointing a committee to look at new administration for health care and perhaps a return to regional health boards.

Ellis worries that with local hospital boards gone, decisions such as the changes to emergency care in O'Leary will be made in Charlottetown. That move closes the department from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., and leaves it open for minor care only, treating cuts and bruises. Ellis believes that's a mistake.

"That hospital was opened in 1957; it has never had a 24-hour period in those years, 42 years, that the emergency ward was closed," said Ellis. 

"It's the hub of West Prince. No problem [to] look in the emergency ward: you'll find 60 people there in a day, about the same as what goes to Summerside."

But O'Leary community council chair Nancy Wallace does not see it that way.

"ER is important, yes. But it's only one piece of the health-care pie," said Wallace.

"And what we've got, I feel we've gained more today than what we've lost."

The report recommended focusing Community Hospital more on long-term and primary care services. In response to that suggestion, the government announced it would add 15 long-term beds to the hospital. A diabetic clinic will also be established and the hospital will be the regional centre for addiction and mental health services.