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A web developer in Dawson Creek, B.C., has created a new website to help northerners quickly find out whether their local emergency room is actually open.
Romeo Macabuhay launched iseropen.ca over the holidays to track closures at Northern Health facilities. He said the idea grew out of a personal experience during his wife’s pregnancy with their third child.
“At that time, one of our biggest concerns was not knowing whether our local emergency room was open,” Macabuhay told CBC Radio West host Sarah Penton.
“The information was scattered, often spread across different Facebook groups or they’re only available by calling. There’s no single, reliable place to check.”
Emergency room closures are a regular occurrence across B.C. due to staffing shortages, and the province’s north is no exception.
In Fort St. James, the community’s brand new emergency room closed more than 40 times in its first year of operation.
Romeo Macabuhay, a web developer in Dawson Creek, created IsEROpen.ca in response to chronic emergency room closures. (CBC)
In the northeast region, more than 600 hours of closures were recorded by local media.
Some communities, like Tumbler Ridge, have gone months without overnight or weekend ER services, while others face repeated closures often on short notice, and with patients diverted to hospitals hours away.
Macabuhay said that kind of uncertainty hit home when Northern Health issued diversion alerts during his wife’s pregnancy. It raised the possibility they would need to travel more than 70 kilometres to Fort St. John if she went into labour.
“Those are our regular worries,” said Macabuhay, who moved from the Philippines three years ago. “Diversions are quite frequent.”
Macabuhay’s website lists Northern Health hospitals with emergency rooms and whether there’s a current service interruption. The information is updated manually and pulled from official Northern Health social media pages, he said.
Users can also view recent closures as well as report incidents, which Macabuhay says he verifies before posting.
This screenshot from the website shows which local ERs were open. Emergency room closures have become a regular occurrence across northern B.C., mostly due to staffing shortages. (iseropen.ca)
Northern Health says it is working toward launching its own online tool to show the real-time status of emergency departments across the region.
The health authority said it shares Macabuhay’s goal of keeping residents informed but warned external sites can only rely on publicly posted information, which may not reflect sudden closures or reopenings.
“We appreciate the effort that the developer has put into their site, and their commitment to informing their community,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
“There are other considerations in launching a site such as this, to ensure it is accurate, informative, and (importantly) – sustainable.”
The health authority says people in a life-threatening emergency should still call 911 to be taken to the nearest available hospital.
LISTEN | New website tracks ER closures in northern B.C.:
Radio West11:43New website tracks ER closures in northern B.C. in real time
Romeo Macabuhay, a web developer in Dawson Creek, created ‘Is ER Open’ in response to chronic emergency room closures.
But even with his job and a newborn at home, Macabuhay says maintaining the site is important to him.
“As a dad, you would feel for the other kids too,” he said. “You don’t want them to be going to the ER and then knowing that the ER is closed … it could mean life or death for them.”
“I have the skill set and I have some time, and why not use it for something that would benefit the community?”
Macabuhay says he’s not operating the website for profit, and would be willing to hand it over to Northern Health, if the health authority wanted to operate it.
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