Niagara Health faces backlash over urgent care shutdowns

Concerned Niagara residents gathered outside of Port Colborne’s urgent care centre Tuesday morning — calling on the government to reverse its decision to close the centre on holidays and every Saturday this summer.

Niagara Health says the closures are due to a lack of doctors and nurses in the region.

“What you have is sort of death by a thousand cuts,” said Chair of the Niagara Health Coalition Sue Hotte.

That’s how Hotte described the rolling back of services at the Port Colborne urgent care centre. Niagara Health recently announced that the Port Colborne location will be closed every Saturday until September.

“This puts an incredible stress on our residents. We know that more than 50 people every day use our urgent care,” said Hotte.

Douglas Memorial Urgent Care in Fort Erie will similarly be closed every Friday until the end of summer, as well as the civic long weekend August 1 to August 4.

The Fort Erie Healthcare SOS group says they found 114 people used their local care centre on an average Friday — the day that the urgent care centre will now shut its doors.

“Which would drive 114 people into the emergency room, and they say that the emergency is already overburdened,” said Fort Erie Healthcare SOS spokesperson Heather Kelley.

It’s around a 13-kilometre distance between the Port Colborne centre and the nearest emergency room in Welland — a distance that can be a challenge for seniors or people with mobility issues.

Niagara Health says the summer closures are “due to a critical shortage of available physicians. These changes are a measure of last resort, necessary to preserve safe, 24/7 operations at our emergency departments in Niagara Falls, Welland and St. Catharines.”

The healthcare organization says they’re facing a shortage of 111 physician shifts this summer, more than half of which are at an emergency department in St. Catharines.

Tuesday’s demonstration follows comments from last month from Premier Doug Ford, who was asked if the government has a plan to tackle the closures.

“It’s always very concerning but these are summer hours, and we can’t get the personnel, that’s what it comes down to. If I had doctors and nurses all over the place, yes, that’s not a problem at all,” said Ford.

Niagara Health is planning to fully close its urgent care centres in Fort Erie and Port Colborne after construction is finished on the new South Niagara Hospital that’s expected to open its doors in summer of 2028.

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