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SWAN HILLS - Alberta Health Services (AHS) has announced that the temporary summer hours at the Swan Hills Healthcare Centre will be extended for another month due to a lack of registered nursing staff and an inability to secure temporary coverage.
A release from AHS states that the Swan Hills Healthcare Centre will continue to be closed overnight from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. until Tuesday, Aug. 9. The facility will otherwise be open during the day.
“This will allow existing staff to provide consistent service for 12 hours each day, during the times when the majority of emergency department and outpatient visits occur,” the release states.
In-patient admissions will be paused during this period, with the exception of two designated supportive living beds that can be made available if staffing is supplied to support them.
The release notes that recruitment of nurses is a challenge across North America, but particularly in rural centres. (Practitioners with specialized skills also remains a challenge.)
AHS originally announced on June 10 that the Swan Hills Healthcare Centre would be moving to temporary summer hours until July 9.
“This decision was not easy, but it will allow us to provide ongoing daily care throughout the summer without creating burnout among our dedicated healthcare professionals,” said Stacy Greening, chief zone officer with the AHS North Zone, in the original June 10 release.
“We will continue to work on recruiting staff and locum (ie. temporary) coverage in order to return to normal operating hours as soon as possible.”
Swan Hills is not the only local health care facility to be affected by a staffing shortage.
Due to high vacancies among nursing staff, the Boyle Healthcare Centre is also on reduced hours between July 1 and Aug. 1. The facility will be open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. each day but will be closed overnight.
The Barrhead Healthcare Centre’s emergency department also had no physicians to assist with patients from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. on July 4-5. There were also similar disruptions through the last half of June.
