‘It’s not right’: 30 ER Closures at Lillooet Hospital this year

The hospital in the community of Lillooet, B.C., has been closed 30 times so far this year leaving residents frightened and frustrated.

The emergency department at Lillooet Hospital is closing again Tuesday evening.

It’s the 30th temporary closure this year and while Interior Health promises help is coming, community concern is growing.

“It’s scary. It’s people’s lives that we’re playing with here,” said Lillooet resident, Sandy McKay.

Last month, McKay said he felt unwell and needed help, but the emergency room was closed.

So he waited until the next morning when he joined others waiting for the ER to reopen.

He was given antibiotics, but it wasn’t enough.

“My condition started to deteriorate where I had no energy even to walk 30, 40 feet to my truck,” said McKay.

He needed more help, but once again, the ER was closed.

His daughter ended up calling 911 and McKay was rushed by ambulance to Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, a two-hour drive away.

“I ended up having a throat infection and double pneumonia,” McKay explained.

“When I got out of the hospital after five days, I was kind of nervous to come back,” he recalled, explaining that the Lillooet emergency department was once again temporarily shut down.

“I ended up getting a hotel room in Kamloops for the weekend,” he said.

Interior Health told CTV News it’s trying to mitigate service interruptions, offering shorter dayside shifts for physicians to cover and also hiring more doctors.

“We have five existing physicians in Lillooet. We’re pleased to be able to announce we’re adding four additional physicians in 2025,” said Karen Cooper, executive director of clinical operations for Interior Health

“We added one in April and through their assessment process will be able to start picking up in the emergency department in July and then we have three more coming in September,” she said.

She said the physicians, trained outside Canada, need time to be assessed to ensure they’re ready to work and go through a practise ready assessment.

“They are fully licensed to practise family medicine in their country of origin and where they trained, however, we do have a process within British Columbia to be able to give time to onboard to a different culture, to onboard potentially to a different system of health care and to make sure that they’re ready to practise,” Cooper said.

Cooper also praised BC Ambulance Service for its assistance during the closures.

“Our B.C. Emergency Health Service ambulance partners are amazing through this and they’ve really been able to ensure that access to care is maintained even in the absence of having an (emergency department) opened within Lillooet.

But Tony Luck, Fraser-Nicola MLA, said the problem with closures “should have been fixed six months, seven months, a year ago.”

Luck, elected with the BC Conservatives, said the closures have his community worried.

He intends to raise his concerns in an upcoming meeting with B.C.s health minister.

“This is really affecting the people up there and they’re at their wits end,” Luck said.

McKay agrees.

“The staff, the nurses are great,” he said. “It’s just that these closures, it’s exhausting.”

He said residents like himself are tired of the uncertainty and want assurances the ER will be open when they need it.

“We need to do something. It’s not right,” he said

The emergency room at Lillooet Hospital and Heath Centre will reopen Wednesday, May 21 at 8 a.m.