Dear Premier Ford and Minister of Health Sylvia Jones,
I am demanding your government reinstate the Emergency Department and full hospital services at Fort Erie Douglas Memorial. Niagara’s local public hospitals are impacted by the government’s continued underfunding and mismanagement by Niagara Health and are now in crisis.
I am writing to urge you to reinstate 24/7 urgent care at Fort Erie Douglas Memorial. Niagara’s local public hospitals are impacted by the government’s continued underfunding of our hospital services. We have seen a number of hospital closures in our area to be replaced with 2 new rebuilds; one in Niagara Falls to be completed 2028 and one in St. Catharines. Fort Erie, Welland and Port Colborne healthcare centres have continued to lose services or to be replaced with part time urgent care.
This has resulted in:
- Huge wait times in St. Catharines and Niagara Falls
- Long offload wait times for our ambulances
- Hundreds of nurses, health professionals and support staff positions waiting to be filled
- Reduction in hours in three out of 5 healthcare facilities
- Difficulty bringing in new General Practitioners due to the lack of services
Patient access for our seniors, families, low income residents and the disabled are a real concern due to the reduction in hours and availability of local services. We have a large number of people moving into our area with families, or retired citizens. We do not have available transportation to take us to appointments out of town, or it is too unaffordable. We also live in a snow belt area and have found our access to the QEW can be halted completely where even ambulance drivers may find it difficult to take people into Niagara Falls, Welland or St. Catharines due to emergencies.
We need our Urgent Care open 24/7 in our community and in fact we need to enhance our services at Douglas Memorial to take care of the needs of the people in our community. As a resident, I need to have the same access to urgent care and emergency care as those living in larger centers.