Hamilton urgent care clinic closing for up to 8 weeks
Published January 14, 2022 at 10:00 pm
Hamilton Health Sciences says the west end urgent care clinic will close temporarily, so doctors and nurses can be re-assigned to emergency care.
The clinic at 690 Main St. W., which patients can attend when they have an illness or injury that is not necessarily an emergency, will close at 10 p.m. on Monday (Jan. 17). That will allow HHS to deploy five emergency-trained physicians, 10 nurses and several other staff to emergency departments and other high priority areas across the hospital network.
The closure could last for up to eight weeks.
“Our urgent care team members have a unique set of skills that are urgently needed at our hospital sites and we are grateful for this support,” HHS chief of emergency medicine Dr. Kuldeep Sidhu said in a statement on Friday.
“We are doing everything possible to address staffing shortages and maintain essential services in our community and our region. While we are seeing less patients requiring critical care as in previous waves, there are more patients requiring admission to our acute wards. At the same time, staffing shortages are at record highs.
“We are currently caring for 213 patients who are positive with COVID-19, with 24 in the ICU, and there are currently 634 staff and physicians in self-isolation.”
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Almost 20 per cent of the 101 ongoing outbreaks in the city are in the hospital networks.
Hamilton has the second-highest recorded COVID-19 rate in Ontario, with a 31.4 per cent positivity and a reproduction number of 1.84. (Anything above 1 indicates exponential growth.) There are also a record 302 people hospitalized with COVID-19, and 40 people in ICUs with intensive care.
In the meantime, individuals with conditions that do not require immediate attention should first contact their family doctor. Perusing needadoc.ca can also help with collecting information about healthcare options.
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