Future of New Waterford hospital questioned
A summertime reduction in services at the New Waterford Consolidated Hospital is just temporary, according to the Nova Scotia Health Authority, but Cape Breton Centre MLA Tammy Martin says she is concerned the facility is on a slippery slope to closure.
The shutdown of the collaborative emergency centre’s mobile care team in June is one of the biggest worries, Martin said, because it was done without consultation and the team doesn’t appear to be restarting anytime soon.
“We find out after the fact that this is just one more thing that has gone with little to no public input or notice,” said the NDP’s health critic and the MLA for Cape Breton Centre, which includes New Waterford.
Martin said the mobile care team is supposed to restart in September, but her concern is that there is no plan to get the team back on the road, and September is only days away.
Other recent cuts at the New Waterford facility include the loss of several lab technician positions and the closure of lab services altogether on Mondays, said Martin.
And the installation of a new sprinkler system in the hospital could be an indicator that the province intends to make the building a long-term care facility, she said.
Dr. Craig Stone, an anesthetist at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital in Sydney and community hospitals in North Sydney, Glace Bay and New Waterford, said he has seen no evidence of a plan to shut down New Waterford hospital.
However, he said, when red flags get raised, the government and health department bureaucrats should address them as quickly as possible.
“We have four hospitals in industrial Cape Breton,” said Stone. “If you’re standing from away … if you’re looking at it from a budgetary point of view, do you really need all four? Can you make do with three?
“I don’t have a suspicion, but I have a fear in the back of my mind that one or more of these hospitals might be at risk, over the next few years, to cutbacks.”
Earlier this year, Premier Stephen McNeil was forced to defend his government’s track record on health care after a rally by doctors in Sydney Mines.
In answer to one of the doctors’ concerns at the time, McNeil said the Northside General Hospital in North Sydney would not be closing.
“New Waterford is probably the oldest of the four sites and it is a target,” said Stone.
The problem, he said, is the hospital provides valuable surgical and clinical services that free up the regional hospital for more important matters.
Nova Scotia Health Authority spokesman Greg Boone said there are no plans to close the New Waterford hospital and no plans to turn it into a long-term care facility.
He said all of the service reductions and changes are a result of summer schedules being adjusted to accommodate staff vacations or shortages.
Lab technicians are in demand at most facilities in the health district’s eastern zone, said Boone, and lab services in New Waterford are still available four days a week. And the mobile care team had to be placed on hold for the summer because nurses were needed at other facilities temporarily, he said.
No decision has been made yet on when that service will resume, but it will depend on what the fall staffing schedule looks like once vacations are over, said Boone.
As for the sprinklers, Boone said the New Waterford hospital was built in the 1960s and their installation was just recently mandated for the building by the fire marshal following an inspection.
“The health authority has no plans to close New Waterford Consolidated Hospital,” he said.
Like other community hospitals in the region, the New Waterford building also houses a long-term care wing, and there are no plans to convert the entire hospital to that service, Boone said.