(CBC) The mayor of Ashcroft, BC, is raising major concerns about health care staffing shortages after a local woman who found her friend unresponsive was told by 911 operators that the only ambulance on call was a half-hour drive away . The incident happened Sunday after Ashcroft resident Debbie Tuohey visited her elderly friend, whom the CBC is not naming out of respect for her privacy, and found her unresponsive at her home. Tuohey said she called 911 and found the community’s only ambulance was in Clinton, about 50.4 kilometers north of Ashcroft in the Inland, due to staffing challenges. “I did CPR on her, but unfortunately I couldn’t save her life,” Tuohey said, adding that her friend went into cardiac arrest. The emergency department at Ashcroft Hospital and the Community Health Care Center were also closed over the weekend due to limited physician availability, according to Mayor Barbara Roden. If the ambulance service were operating at normal levels, the closest open hospital would be the Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, more than an hour’s drive away — and it currently faces its own staffing challenges. In a statement, BC Emergency Health Services (BCEHS) confirmed it received a call on July 17 at 11:23 a.m. PT to respond to a patient at an apartment complex in the 700-block of Elm Street — the same block the hospital and ambulance station is located on. The ambulance and ambulance crew did not arrive on the scene until 11:50 a.m. “You hear about the ongoing closures … and what that really means is that a resident in Ashcroft, who literally lived within walking distance of a hospital, would not be able to get any help,” Roden told CBC’s Daybreak North. “I think it’s probably a lot of people’s worst fears.” BCEHS said it currently faces staffing challenges, but is actively making changes to improve and stabilize staffing. “We know it is stressful waiting for an ambulance and we will look into this call given the longer response time for this type of call,” a BCEHS spokesperson said.
The hospital was closed due to staffing issues
Roden said local firefighters were also called to respond to Tuohey’s 911 call, but are not capable of performing the same level of emergency care. He said the health care situation in Ashcroft and surrounding communities continued to deteriorate and more needed to be done to tackle the issue. Meanwhile, he said he also wants Internal Health to better communicate closures and delays to the public. “We need to do a better job of communicating with our residents what’s going on in their health care system,” Roden said. According to data verified by CBC News, hospitals in the province’s Interior have experienced the most emergency closures this year, and the most closures have occurred at hospitals outside urban centers. Staff shortages have been exacerbated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. A Home Health spokesperson told CBC they are working to do everything they can to deal with service disruptions and keep patients safe. “The stark truth that we’re hearing from mayors across this region is that health care is breaking down and in this part of the world that people can’t get care, that people are dying because they can’t get an ambulance.” said Carl Meadows, Executive Director of Internal Health Clinical Operations for Thompson Cariboo. He admitted that Home Health may not have hit the mark in communication and said it was good for them to be listening to those concerns.
