'This was ours': Minden, Ont., residents pack meeting to find out why their ER was closed

Residents of Minden, Ont., packed a town hall meeting on Thursday to find out why their local emergency room was permanently closed at the start of the month.

Haliburton Highlands Health Services (HHHS), a local health board that hosted the meeting, told residents it made the decision to close the emergency room at its Minden site on June 1 due to a lack of staff. The board is consolidating its emergency services at its Haliburton site, about 25 kilometres away.

The town hall meeting was held one day before a new urgent care clinic opens in Minden on the site of the closed emergency room. The clinic will operate without doctors, have reduced operating hours and will be open only on weekends, starting on Friday, with plans to open seven days a week based on community needs. It will be staffed by nurse practitioners and registered practical nurses.

Jeff Nicholls, a member of a group that calls itself the Minden Position Paper Team, said the group is looking for more answers about the closure that happened with only six weeks notice.

"We're anxious. We're scared," Nicholls told CBC Toronto on Thursday before the meeting. "This was ours and we want it back."

Nicholls said the meeting was the first opportunity for residents to see the people who made the decision to close the emergency room and to be able to hold those decision-makers accountable for the closure.

"The decision made people cry. It made men, women and children cry," he said. "This is how much it means."

'We want it back,' resident says

Alain Aubry, a Minden resident, said the urgent care clinic is no replacement for an emergency room and is a stop-gap measure.

"It's a big name for something that's really tiny. We're glad to have it, of course, glad to have anything," he said. "We're still going to keep fighting hard for an ER. We want it back."

Marina Hodson, executive director of Kawartha North Family Health Team, said the urgent care clinic will be somewhere in between an emergency room and a doctor's office and will bridge the gap between primary and emergency care.

"This is a starting point. Once you have that team, what else can you add? How can you find additional resources to complement that? This doesn't have to be the only thing that's there. It can be just the first thing that's there and then let's add what the community really needs," she said.

"I've already said to the community, 'If the emergency department is able to return, I'm happy to vacate, I'm happy to augment the services.' So bring it back, that's amazing, but at least I'm going to make sure that the space is going to be available."

Closure not about money, health minister says

Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones said at a news conference on Thursday that her ministry worked "very closely" with the HHHS to find out if the closure was "most appropriate" for the community.

"I'm going to be very clear. The closure was not about money," Jones said.

Jones said the ministry asked the hospital leadership whether additional financial support from the province would impact or change their decision.

"The answer was very clearly no," Jones said.

The Minden Position Paper Team says it is a group of community advocates, healthcare professionals and local residents "deeply concerned "about the closure of the Minden ER. The group says it is conducting research into the impact of the closure and decision-making process behind the move.