Portion of Interior Health website reminding residents to know where to access emergency medical care/via Interior Health
What was originally intended to be a 24-hour closure of the hospital emergency room in Lillooet has now turned into another — at least — 49-hour stretch of no emergency medical services for that region of BC.
Interior Health announced on Sunday evening that the Lillooet Hospital and Health Centre is going to extend an existing closure.
“Lillooet and area residents are advised of temporary changes to emergency department hours at Lillooet Hospital and Health Centre,” said Interior Health in a release on Sunday evening.
Kamloops’ hospital, as is the case, is being told to accept patients from the Lillooet area.
“Emergency services will be unavailable from 7 a.m. on Monday, March 17, 2025 to 8 a.m. on Tuesday, March 18, 2025. Patients can access care at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops during this time.”
Signs to entrance of Lillooet Hospital/via Interior Health
This extends a previously announced closure of the Lillooet ER, which began on Sunday morning at 7am, and is now due to run until Tuesday morning at 8am.
This will be the 2nd, 49 hour shutdown of the Lillooet emergency room in a week, as the first in the latest of shutdowns of the local ER began on March 9th — also for 49 hours in total.
By the end of the latest shutdown in Lillooet — since this current string of ER closures began — the local emergency room will have lost a total 148 hours of service in the 8 days since the shutdowns began.
Of the 217 hours of service that would have been available, the local ER has only been open 67 hours in total, or around 31% of the time.
Meanwhile, the ER shutdowns continued elsewhere in region this weekend as well.
The Health Authority has announced the closure of the 100 Mile House Emergency Room from 7am Monday to 8am Tuesday, diverting all patients to either Williams Lake or Kamloops.
Merritt’s ER was also shut down — oddly for around 3 hours early Sunday morning until 5am.
Not clear as to what happened there, as official explanations were not provided by the Health Authority, nor was a more precise time as to how long the closure was for.
Newsrooms received the notification at roughly 2am on the Sunday.
Entrance to the Lillooet Hospital and Health Centre/via Interior Health
