Nova Scotia Health closes Liverpool ER on weekends, opens 24 hours through week
Queens General Hospital. Photo Ed Halverson
UPDATED FEB. 28, 2:05 p.m.
Liverpool won’t have local emergency department services available on weekends, but it will have 24-hour service through the week.
Nova Scotia Health announced Thursday that it is introducing “expanded and consistent hours” for the Queens General Hospital emergency department.
Beginning March 1, the ER in Liverpool will be open for 24 hours from Mondays at 8 a.m. to Fridays at 1:30 p.m. It will close on Fridays at 1:30 p.m. until Mondays at 8 a.m.
Nova Scotia Health says the change increases the department’s weekly operating hours from about 35 to 101.5 hours.
Leslie Oliver, the executive director of community and rural health in the western zone for Nova Scotia Health, told QCCR on Friday that the new ER schedule in Liverpool will provide more service for patients.
“This temporary schedule that was developed in collaboration with the emergency staff and physicians really will be tripling the amount of hours that the emergency department is open for our community. This is a positive news story for our community.”
In the past few years, the emergency department at Queens General has been hit regularly with temporary closures.
Oliver says the new schedule will allow for better co-ordination with other hospital departments such as laboratory, diagnostic imaging and pharmacy services.
She said virtual urgent care for certain conditions like prescription refills, urinary tract infections or coughs and sore throats will still be available at the hospital seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. A triage nurse will be on duty for that service during those times.
“And a great number of the patients in the community who are presenting for the emergency department they’re actually appropriate for that virtual urgent care stream so we would encourage them to take advantage of that opportunity as well.”
Oliver said there is still a significant nurse shortage in the department.
“We’ve been really committed to our recruitment efforts and that’s not going to change,” she said. “We want to make sure we have Nova Scotia nurses working within our emergency department for sure.”
She said they plan to stick with this schedule until they can hire enough staff to return the Queens General ER to a 24/7 operation.
“We’re hoping to provide this consistent ongoing coverage for the next several months, hoping to have more success in the recruitment area with more physicians coming on board and more nurses to support the department. We don’t have any plans of going back to an inconsistent coverage schedule. Our goal is to have that Queens emergency department open 24/7, 365 days a year.”
Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com
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