BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association
Your Data Your Rights
Severe overcrowding in hospital emergency rooms has led to a startling allegation in New Brunswick’s legislature.
Bill Hogan, the Progressive Conservative opposition’s health critic, asked during question period last week whether the fire marshal had fined any hospitals for overcrowding.
Health Minister John Dornan said he knew nothing about it.
“It was brought to my attention, in at least one hospital, and I want to know if it’s true, whether or not there’s been any hospitals in New Brunswick that have been fined by the fire marshal for overcrowding,” asked Hogan, the member for Woodstock- Hartland, and a former Tory cabinet minister, during Thursday’s House sitting.
Dornan, a doctor who has served in the emergency room at the Saint John Regional Hospital, replied he was not aware of any regulations under the fire marshal that would have been cited.
“At the end of the day, if you need emergency care, it’s an unsafe environment anywhere else,” the Liberal politician said, adding he was unaware of any orders from the fire marshal, nor did he anticipate any. “We do have crowding in our emergency departments, it’s intermittent and we’re working hard to reduce that.”
The critic thanked the minister, mentioning he had visited several ERs and didn’t like what he’d witnessed. He did not identify his source, nor the specific hospitals where he’d seen overcrowding.
“If it were dogs or cats or if it were horses that we had lined up and stuck in every cranny in the building, you know, we’d have someone showing up taking them out of there.”
Notably, the health critic did not ask the minister of public safety, Robert Gauvin, about the situation. He’s responsible for the fire marshal’s office. Brunswick News asked to speak to Gauvin afterwards, but a provincial spokesperson said he was unavailable.
Brunswick News asked the department directly about it.
Spokesman Geoffrey Downey said in an email the Office of the Fire Marshal “isn’t aware of any outstanding orders made under the Fire Prevention Act for any provincial hospitals, and we have no record of any hospital operators being charged under the Fire Prevention Act related to overcrowding.”
Downey added that the office does not issue fines for contraventions of the Fire Prevention Act or its regulations.
“If a safety concern is identified, the building owner or operator is directed to remedy the unsafe condition,” he wrote. “Municipal and provincial fire prevention officers conduct more than 7,000 inspections and 500 plan reviews annually across New Brunswick, including hundreds in hospitals and other health facilities.”
On average, Downey said, one to two of those inspections reveal infractions that require formal charges under the law.
“More than 99.9 per cent of inspections or contraventions are resolved without formal charges.”
Horizon Health Network, which runs most hospitals in southern New Brunswick and Miramichi, serving two-thirds of patients in the province, also insisted it wasn’t implicated.
“There have been no such fines receivedby Horizon facilities,” wrote Blaine Lynch, Horizon’s regional director of facilities, engineering and property management, in an email to Brunswick News.
A spokesperson for Vitalité Health Network, whose hospitals are mostly in northern New Brunswick and other mostly francophone communities, said in an email that “after checking with our staff, we confirm that we never received such a fine or citation for any our facilities.”
Speaking to reporters afterward, Hogan said the fire marshal routinely goes into all public buildings to make sure they comply with fire regulations, including rules about overcrowding.
The Tory politician wouldn’t say who his source was or whether it was a hospital worker or administrator. He said his party would file a right to information request to find out definitively if what he had heard was true.
“Having been in a couple of emergency rooms and seen how crowded they actually are, I think it’s so sad,” Hogan said. “We need to think of human dignity.”
The MLA added that he’d take the minister at his word that he’d look into the issue (although Dornan never said in question period he’d look into it).
However, Hogan said the health-care crisis went beyond overcrowding, mentioning recruitment and retention issues for both doctors, nurses and other hospital workers.
Six out of 10 nurses left the system in New Brunswick last year, before a new deal with the nurses was signed between the Liberal government and their union, a problem the minister blamed largely on retirements. Dornan said it was a year-old statistic that had changed for the better.
Hogan said he’d travelled the province to see hospital ERs.
“We’re clearly not asking the right questions on health care because we’re spending more money and not improving our results,” he said.
Brunswick News asked him to describe what he had seen.
“It reminded me of war movies that I saw, with wounded people coming in left, right and centre. Just the nurses and the doctors and all the individuals being, you know, overworked. It was unbelievable.”
He added that he would invite all other members of the legislative assembly to sign a confidentiality agreement and see for themselves what’s going on in the ERs.
It’s common to see patients in gurneys lining hallways in New Brunswick’s hospital emergency departments, and people who have urgent, but not emergency needs, often wait for hours for treatment, sometimes stretching around the clock, which Dornan and other health-care professionals have admitted is a huge problem.
Experts blame the situation, which has deteriorated over several decades, on a shortage of health-care professionals and, in particular, family doctors, forcing people to go to the ER for treatment.
A demographic bulge of aging baby boomers has exacerbated the problem, along with a lack of space in nursing homes, pushing infirm people into hospital beds.
“Spend two days in any emergency room in the province to see what is actually happening,” Hogan said. “And then perhaps we can work together to improve health-care services for New Brunswickers,”
The Local Journalism Initiative (LJI) is a federally funded program to add coverage in under-covered areas or on under-covered issues. This content is created and submitted by participating publishers and is not edited. Access can also be gained by registering and logging in at: https://lji-ijl.ca
You can support trusted and verified news content like this.
FIPA’s news monitor subscribers, donors and funders help make these available to everyone rather than behind a paywall. We appreciate every contribution because it makes a difference.
If you found this article interesting and useful, please consider contributing here.
