Quebec to open two nurse-run clinics in Montreal to ease emergency room crisis

Quebec’s latest plan to resolve the province’s emergency room crisis includes opening two clinics run entirely by nurse practitioners.

The new clinics to open in the coming weeks in Montreal are part of a three-point plan announced today by Health Minister Christian Dubé to ease overcrowding in the province’s hospitals.

Dubé’s announcement comes the same day a letter was made public from the heads of Quebec’s emergency departments saying ERs in the province have reached a “breaking point.”

“I’m looking forward and in fact, I’m meeting most of those doctors (Wednesday) morning in Quebec City,” said Dubé. “And I think we all appreciate what they’re saying because they’re right. I mean, we should act on certain things.”

Quebec Health Minister Christian Dubé. (Credit: (CityNews / Martin Daigle)

The minister also announced the 8-1-1 phone line Quebecers can call to be directed to health care will be extended to pediatric patients.

Dubé says the third part of his strategy involves moving patients out of hospital who can’t be returned home and don’t have a spot in a long-term care facility.

“When the people are being taken care of, they have their operation, we can send them to a place where they’re safe and they can have their rehabilitation,” he said.

He says the government has put out a call for tender for 1,700 beds outside the hospital network, adding that 58 per cent of that extra bed space has already been found.

“The absolute volume of of people coming to the emergency room is the same as it was in 2017, ’18, ’19, albeit more seriously ill,” said Lucie Opatrny, the assistant deputy minister of the Quebec Health Ministry. “But there are hundreds of beds closed. And so that is what drives right now the length of stay in the emergency room up.”

Last week, the province formed a crisis team to tackle long wait times in ERs — without adding any additional resources. Their goal was to find short-term solutions and have every Quebecer showing up to an ER seen within an hour and a half.

Public health director Dr. Luc Boileau was instructed to come up with a plan as well.

READ MORE: Overcrowded Montreal ERs working at over 100 per cent capacity, some in Quebec reaching 300 per cent

“We can create a task force and we can do whatever we can to try to insist that we’re helping healthcare workers, but these task forces are hiring more administrative workers,” says nurse, Naveed Hussain. “They don’t have any effect on what’s happening on the ground.”

Montreal and its surrounding regions seem to be most affected, with occupancy rates of over 100 per cent.

According to ER tracker, Indexsanté, as of 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, the hospitals with some of the highest number of beds occupied included:

• Jewish General Hospital: 170 per cent
• CHUM: 161 per cent
• Montreal Children’s Hospital: 158 per cent

“We’re under pressure,” says Hussain. “We want to perform the best we can for our colleagues and for our patients and the people in our society, but it takes its toll and we’re getting tired.”

He says this surge in the need for emergency care is because we’re still in a pandemic.

“We have people coming in with COVID-19, we also have a shortage of health care workers available to us,” he said. “When you add on the fact that this is flu season, we have RSV going around, children are getting infected as well, adults are getting infected. it adds to the crisis.”

Hussain says he and his colleagues are trying and want to able to give the optimal best care possible for their patients.

“If we don’t have the resources or we don’t have the ability to care for them, we will see people slip through the cracks,” he said.

Hussain says he wants to see ways the government can alleviate pressure on the healthcare system.

“I’m really hopeful that our current government and the people in place will find solutions that can actually really help everyone as much as possible,” he said. “It’s a hard task, but I believe that if we have the necessary things in place and protocols in place, we can aid people as much as we can.”

A short-term solution that Naveed thinks might work: opening CLSCs 24/7.

“Can we give them more tools and more access to be able to care for people who are elderly?” he asked. “But that takes time, and that’s the thing, we’re running out of time.”