Prairie Mountain Health is preparing for the holidays, and part of that includes making it easy for people to find out what emergency departments are open, and when.
The regional health authority knows it can be frustrating for people to be uncertain about what services they can access, but there is even more uncertainty around the holidays says CEO Brian Schoonbaert.
"As we know we have been having some issues, obviously with staffing, both nursing, physician staffing, and others. It gets particularly worse during, unfortunately, the holiday season, because it's more difficult for us to get agency nurses for example and alike. So we want to make sure that people know where they can go, and how they can find out what's open and when."
One way that PMH is doing this is by making sure its webpage which has emergency service hours and locations is updated as quickly as possible.
"Unfortunately during this time, it could be that maybe the physician is sick, or one of the staff calls in sick, and we could close down at the last minute because of that. So this is letting people know what it's like at any given time, and we actually have people on call to make sure that those updates are made as fast as we can."
PMH wants to remind people that they have emergency department hours available on their website, and they've also created the QR code below that will take anyone directly to the page.
