Is Life Getting Better?

Or is death getting worse?

For the past couple of years Bonavista has had problems, along with many other rural centres in Newfoundland. Specifically, closure of the Hospital’s emergency department. This is part of a much longer problem. Before I moved here in February 2019 I had read a local report that the town council had voted and supplied financial benefits for a doctor who was moving from the hospital to private practice.

It is strange to walk or bicycle past a hospital that boasts a large roadside sign that reads “Emergency Room is Open Today”, with an alternate reading on days when …

This morning I read an article from the CBC whose headline reads “ Daughter of man who died during Bonavista ER closure holds protest at Confederation Building , and therein I spot these two tantalizing data:-

(1) The Bonavista emergency room closed for just over 18 days in February — including on Feb. 20, when Shelley Gosselin's father, 78-year-old Charles Marsh, died.

(2) According to Eastern Health, the Bonavista emergency department will have sufficient staff to open for 19 days this month. The Bonavista emergency room was open Thursday but was scheduled to close again Friday morning and remain closed through the weekend.

Of course, being a numbers man I think about this.

February has 28 days, so the emergency department being closed for 19 days suggests that it was open only for 9 days.

March has 31 days, so we anticipate that the emergency department will be closed for only 12 days, but we will wait and see.

The service change is nowhere near as good as it sounds. The number of “open” days is anticipated to grow from 9 to 19. That is a ratio of about 1:2.

In other words, if all goes according to plan and prediction, your chances of dying have dropped from 68% to about 39%. As a 76-year old I don’t get much comfort from that.

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