Hospital in Hay River, N.W.T., has no doctor on site this week

The N.W.T.'s Hay River Regional Health Centre will be without an on-site doctor for nearly a week.

As of Monday, the emergency and outpatient departments at the hospital will only have two nurse practitioners on site. The Hay River Health and Social Services Authority (HRHSSA) made the announcement last week.

The authority said residents who visit the emergency room from now until Friday, May 2, will be assessed and triaged by nurses. And if they need a doctor, they will be connected to one working remotely or they will be medevaced to Yellowknife or Edmonton if needed.

Beatrice Lepine has lived in Hay River all her life. She said the lack of services in the community is worrisome, especially in the event of a critical incident during severe weather or if multiple people are injured at once.

"I just worry about big accidents or something like that, where you'd need a doctor to help in the ER," she said. "I realize there's shortage of doctors Canada-wide, but we're kind of at the bottom of list."

Lepine said her family has already experienced delays due to administrative gaps in the health-care system. Her brother recently missed a flight to see a specialist in Yellowknife because the clinic's paperwork was not processed in time.

Lepine said she is concerned that staff shortages in health care are becoming normalized.

"It almost seems like nothing's really been said or done about it," she said. "I don't think there's any kind of alarm over it. It seems like we are getting used to lower levels of service."

The Hay River Health Authority said in its statement that it's working to recruit more permanent doctors and offering incentives to attract more nurse practitioners.

However, according to Dr. Courtney Howard, an ER doctor in Yellowknife, the gaps are part of a broader staffing challenge affecting the health-care system across the Northwest Territories, and the current incentives are not enough.

She said there is no longer a financial incentive for physicians to work in the North and that makes it difficult to attract and retain permanent medical staff who are making sacrifices, such as leaving their family support systems behind in the South.

"When I signed on 15 years ago, we were going to make a little bit more in the N.W.T.," she said. "We could sort of justify to ourselves coming up there with all the student debt that we had.

"That no longer really exists."

She said the territory relies heavily on temporary locum doctors who fly in from other provinces. While she's grateful for their help in filling staffing gaps, she said this approach is financially unsustainable.

"They spent an entire day on the plane that we've paid for," she said. "They're going to be working for one or two days … we also provide them with housing as well as often a car.

"It's incredibly inefficient, from a health-care expenditure standpoint."

Howard said improving incentives for physicians and creating more flexible work arrangements could help improve the system. She also mentioned using AI transcription tools to reduce the administrative burden, something that's already being used in other parts of Canada.

"What we're hearing from people is that this is buying them hours back every day," she said. "They get to have lunch, they get to go home from the clinic at a reasonable hour and see their kids."