Interior Health confirms it is working on several recruitment strategies in Merritt.

It comes as there have been 14 closures of the Emergency Room in Merritt this year, five of which occurred in September alone.

Interior Health West Clinical Operations Executive Director Kathy Doull says it’s clear there are not enough healthcare professionals in Merritt.

“We know these situations are frustrating and challenging for everyone, and the service interruptions are concerning for all of us; the decision to divert services is never taken lightly, and closing the ER is always a last resort.”

As a result, Doull says they are working to hire more healthcare professionals for the Merritt ER through a variety of recruitment efforts, which she suggests have already been showing progress.

“We are advertising for physicians and staff through Health Match BC, we implemented a targeted social media and marketing campaign to support working in Merritt and we have implemented new strategies to support our nursing staff who need to travel to the site to work.”

Doull says two nurses have been hired and already started working in Merritt a couple of weeks ago – with another set to arrive in the next week or so.

She adds that they’ve also recently partnered with Go Health BC, which is a longer-term strategy to get nurses to the area.

“It is a program that started in Northern BC, which essentially hires traveling nurses and we have recently been able to access this program, so we will have additional nurses coming to the site through this program,” said Doull.

“These are nurses who are not coming shift by shift, they are coming for many weeks.”

Meanwhile, Health Minister Adrian Dix says his Ministry is working closely with the City of Merritt to try and put an end to the series of closures that has plagued the local emergency room this year.

However, Merritt Mayor Mike Goetz says he intends to try and withhold tax revenue that goes to the province to make up for the lack of service at the Nicola Valley Emergency Room.