Emergency department closed for 2 days in Lillooet, B.C.

The Lillooet Hospital emergency department was closed Monday due to a staffing shortage, and Interior Health says it will remain closed until Wednesday morning.

"We've been unable to secure a physician to cover our emergency department in Lilooet for the next 48 hours," said Karen Cooper, the executive director of clinical operations for Interior Health, in a Monday interview.

With the ER closed, residents are being told to call the ambulance if they need emergency care, which can transport them to an ER in another community.

"If it's a life-threatening emergency, it's always 911 whether we're open or whether we're on service diversion [and closed]," Cooper said.

The hospital ER has already had to close about two dozen times since July 2024, according to CBC News tracking. 

The closure is one of many in a province that's facing a doctor and nursing shortage.

The health department recommends Lilooet residents needing emergency care head to Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, which is about a 170-kilometre drive away. Cooper said she recommends Kamloops as the ER department there is large, and the hospital has many specialists.

Cooper said schedulers do their best to try to bring in more doctors from out of town when there's a shortage so that they don't have to close the ER. However, they don't always succeed.

"On a personal level, there's never going to not be a sense that you've let a community down by not being able to mitigate a gap in service," she said.

Ian Tait, a spokesperson for the Ambulance Paramedics of B.C., said its members are increasingly being asked to fill that gap. ER closures in rural and remote areas are becoming more common, he added.

As a result, he says paramedics' work is harder.

"Our members are stepping up all the time to transport these patients a lot longer," Tait said.

"Usually, you can go to the local hospital to stabilize [a patient] and get everything started. So it definitely does add pressure to the ambulance service as well as to transport times and then returning as well," he said.