In a release from Horizon Health on the closure of the operating room in St. Stephen, it says “surgical volume has been low at Charlotte County Hospital for many years, despite Horizon’s efforts to increase volume.”
Chief of Staff at the Saint John Regional Hospital, Dr. John Dornan says the opposite, “Well, we haven’t tried to increase the volume because that necessitates bringing someone in there at a low volume to start with. Number one and number two, surgical practices are changing.”
Dr. Dornan says when a surgeon operates on someone, there needs to be adequate resources on-call. He says to have one or two surgeons by themselves is not how surgeries are done these days.
Dornan says they have not actively tried to bring in more surgeons to the Charlotte County Hospital, as the ones we had were having a hard time already being on call 24/7.
In the meantime, the Concerned Citizens of Charlotte County group say it’s the fault of Horizon Health for having a low volume of surgeries at the hospital in St. Stephen.
Co-chair of the group, John Gardner says when you’re sick, you don’t get the option of where to have your surgery, that’s up to the Hospital and Horizon Health, “Horizon hasn’t been scheduling operations in this area. They have been sending surgeries to the Sussex Health Clinic, but not to the Charlotte County Hospital, and that’s something that’s very curious as to why that’s going on.”
Gardner also notes that doctors are coming to St. Stephen for mobile clinics, such as a cardiologist from Saint John comes down to see patients at the CCH, so why aren’t they doing the same thing with surgery.
The operating room at the Charlotte County Hospital in St. Stephen is set to close August 8th.
