Whitehorse hospital adds extra ER staff

Whitehorse General Hospital has added extra staff in its emergency room to address an increase in the number of patients coming in.

An extra physician and an extra nurse are on duty at Whitehorse hospital for the next three months to deal with a recent surge in patients. The extra staff are working on weekdays between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m.

The Yukon Hospital Corp. says it has temporarily boosted emergency room staffing because more people have been going there in recent months, in part because several Whitehorse walk-in clinics closed down earlier this year.

The move is meant to ease the pressures on the emergency room during its peak operating hours, according to officials.

Hospital chief executive Joe MacGillivray said the staffing increase has already been making a difference, but it's too soon to tell if it will be a long-term solution.

"If we're not seeing the volumes in the emergency department, we'll be looking at making modifications going forward," MacGillivray told CBC News.

"That isn't the indication for the past few days, but I think we need to see how this is going over, over a longer period of time."

Dr. Rao Tadepalli, president of the Yukon Medical Association, said adding more staff in the emergency room was meant to help deal with people who do not have access to a family doctor.

But Yukoners who do have family doctors have been showing up in the emergency room as well, Tadepalli added.

"I would like to see more clinics to come, and I would like patients with non-emergent reasons going to their family doctor rather than using the emergency room as a walk-in drop-in clinic. That's not the purpose of the emergency room," he said.

Hospital corporation officials say they hope to recruit more physicians this fall. Tadepalli said he wants to see more physicians in the territory, operating family practices.