Petition demands overnight ER

A Montague woman has launched a petition urging the government to re-open the emergency room at night time at Kings County Memorial Hospital.

Emergency service at the hospital was cut last April. It had been 24 hrs a day, but is now just 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Phyllis Nolan, who started the petition Tuesday, knows a lot of people who are concerned about having to make a 45-minute drive to the emergency room in Charlottetown.

"Some of them are in nursing homes; some of them are in their own homes; some of them are sick," said Nolan.

"Some of them have umpteen different things wrong and they're terrified that they may not make it if they ever had to go to Charlottetown or Summerside."

It is not just older people who are concerned enough to sign the petition.

"I'm asthmatic and if I ever needed to come in when it was closed I would have to go to town," said Sarah Jane Fraser.

Local MLA Jim Bagnall has complained the six doctors who would have to work the ER don't want to offer the full 24-hour service. He said it's up to Health Minister Carolyn Bertram, who moved into the portfolio last month, to make it happen.

"Doug Currie, when he was minister, looked me straight in the eye and told me that Montague ER was part of their medical plans for Prince Edward Island, and that it would definitely be re-opening," said Bagnall.

"Since that time that message has changed."

Bertram met with the doctors this week. She would not commit to re-opening overnight.

"If we can ensure that certain emergency room professionals are there government will re-evaluate the situation," she said.

"As it stands right now we don't have the emergency room nursing staff."

Eastern P.E.I. lost the emergency department in Souris under the previous Progressive Conservative government, which the current Liberal administration said it would reconsider. The closure of another ER in western P.E.I. has made any changes in emergency service in rural areas a political issue.

"We're not going away," said Nolan.

"I'm not going to stop in the middle of it and say to heck with it. I'm going to keep on with it."