100 Mile District General Hospital’s emergency room(ER) will be closed for the second day in a row.
Interior Health says the ER will be closed from 7 a.m. and will reopen at 8 p.m.
South Cariboo residents in need of emergency care will have to access it at Cariboo Memorial Hospital in Williams Lake.
Karen Cooper, Executive Director of Clinical Operations for Interior Health West, says the reason for this closure is that the Health Authority was unable to secure a physician for the shift.
“We have a small pool of physicians in 100 Mile who are supporting our local emergency departments. We rely heavily on the hospital’s locum or relief physicians, so we occasionally get unexpected situations such as a sick call that causes us to cancel… We exhausted all available ways to fill the shifts, but we were unable to do so.”
Vista Radio asked Cooper if 100 Mile is in a crisis.
“I think short term, I wouldn’t use the word ‘crisis’, but we have some short-term variability, moving towards medium and long-term stability.”
Cooper said Interior Health is expecting a new physician at 100 Mile District General in the spring, which will increase the local numbers. Interior Health is also working with physicians to make more attractive incentives for physicians to work in ERs with renegotiated contracts and hiring more nurse practitioners.
Another strategy the health authority is looking into is moving to a virtual overnight coverage model that it has been using in four of its smaller ERs. Cooper says the virtual model could potentially help support the volumes in the ER and provide reliable service.
“With those strategies moving forward, I don’t want the public to brace for this to be the new normal,” says Cooper. “We are hoping to move past this and move into more stable and reliable service.”
For today, Saturday, March 14’s closure, Interior Health says all in-patient care will continue, and anyone in need of life-threatening care should call 911 to be transported to the nearest available facility.
Anyone with non-emergency care questions should call HealthLink BC at 811, or visit HealthlinkBC.ca.
This is the ninth time the ER at 100 Mile District General has been closed in 2026.
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