St. Joseph’s Urgent Care Centre reduces hours due to critical staffing shortages

St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton (SJHH) is temporarily reducing the hours of its Urgent Care Centre due to “critical” staffing shortages.

The King St. East location will move to evening-only hours, running from 4 to 10 p.m.

The healthcare provider says the temporary change will allow urgently needed healthcare professionals to be redeployed to other high demand areas of the hospital.

It says two emergency-trained physicians, nine nurses and clerks will be sent to the Charlton campus emergency department and other high priority areas of the hospital.

“This measure is necessary to help maintain essential and critical services to our community during this difficult stage of the COVID pandemic,” said Dr. Greg Rutledge, Deputy Chief of Staff and Chief of Emergency Medicine in a press release. “Our urgent care team members have a unique set of skills needed to help address critical staffing shortages and high demand for care at our Charlton inpatient site.”

Services and procedures have already been ramped down but the hospital network says maintaining staffing levels has been challenging.

Last week, there were more than 250 St. Joseph’s staff members and physicians in self-isolation due to the rapid spread of Omicron in the community.

SJHH says the intensive care unit (ICU) has been nearly or completely full in recent days. Half of patients in the ICU are currently positive with COVID-19.