As Fort Erie Urgent Care Centre reopens, shuttle to Port Colborne stops
Published February 23, 2022 at 2:41 pm
With the Fort Erie Urgent Care Centre reopening today (Feb. 23), the temporary shuttle from the town to the Port Colborne Urgent Care Centre is officially done as of Sunday.
Fort Erie, Niagara Region and Niagara Health had created the shuttle system, utilizing a taxi service, as a stop-gap measure for Fort Erie residents to get to the Port Colborne Urgent Care Centre.
In a controversial decision, Niagara Health locked the doors of the Fort Erie Urgent Care Centre on January 6 in order to send the unit’s staff elsewhere during the worst of the Omicron wave.
Niagara Health, which oversees all Niagara hospitals, were extremely short-staffed as virus was knocking dozens of staff out of commission at the time.
However, their decision to close the Fort Erie unit at 230 Bertie Street lead to some rancor as they had not told the town beforehand. Mayor Wayne Redekop was disturbed that the closure was done without any input from his town.
In the end, the Fort Erie centre was closed for 48 days before reopening today at 8 am.
Niagara Regional Chair Jim Bradley praised the shuttle concept for Fort Erie residents who, after being locked out of the town’s health centre, were redirected and transported to Port Colborne.
“While I am pleased to see the (Fort Erie) urgent care centre reopening, I am also proud of how quickly Regional staff jumped into action, in partnership with the Town of Fort Erie and Niagara Health, to develop a practical transportation solution to help serve the people of Niagara,” Bradley said.
“Ensuring convenient access to our primary health care facilities across Niagara is always crucially important, perhaps even more so during a pandemic,” he continued.
Niagara Health President and CEO Lynn Guerriero was happy that the medical staffing shortage was declining to the point where the Fort Erie unit could comfortably reopen.
“Thankfully, the number of COVID-19 cases in the community and in the hospital continue to decrease, and our staffing levels have stabilized (and that) we are now in a position to safely redeploy our UCC staff and physicians back to the Fort Erie Site,” said Guerriero.
Urgent Care Centres are for concerns that are not an emergency but cannot wait for a scheduled appointment. Niagara’s Urgent Care Centres are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.