When Grant Jordan began showing the signs of a heart attack, he headed straight away to his local hospital.
But the Sussex, N.B., man arrived at the Sussex Health Centre 18 minutes after the ER had closed for the night.
“I got out of the car and I walked up to the door and they said, ‘We’re closed,’” he recalled.
“And I said, ‘I think I’m having a heart attack.’ And they said, ‘Well, we’re closed, but we can call 911 for you.’ And so they did, but they wouldn’t let me in.”
It turned out Jordan was indeed suffering a heart attack, and needed emergency surgery.
He says some hospital staff members assisted him as he waited 12 minutes for an ambulance in the hospital’s parking lot.
“You’re kind of scared at that point, you know?” he said.
Jordan was transported to the Saint John Regional Hospital, where he had two stents put in.
Hospital ERs on reduced hours
When the incident happened on Aug. 31, the ER at the Sussex Health Centre had had its hours temporarily reduced for 18 months already. It was only open from 8 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. — leaving those in the area to make the 45-minute drive to Saint John or 50-minute drive to Moncton.
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Jordan’s wife, Naomi, says the reduced hours have left the community in a precarious situation.
“(They’re) saying, ‘We’re closed’ to a heart attack or stroke or someone going into a really serious bout of anaphylactic shock,” she said. “(Those patients) don’t have the luxury of coming back in the morning because morning might never come for them.”
In early 2020, the Sussex ER was one of six that the Blaine Higgs government planned to close overnight. That plan was eventually abandoned, and during the election later that year, Higgs promised the idea wouldn’t be revived.
Yet, many of those same rural communities have dealt with closures due to staff shortages anyway.
Jordan says since his ordeal, he’s heard from others who have experienced similar incidents. In one case, a neighbour told him he had suffered an allergic reaction to a bee sting.
“He’s going into anaphylactic shock down there at the hospital waiting for an ambulance,” Jordan said.
“Another person I was talking to that had a heart attack, they decided not to wait for an ambulance because there wasn’t one close enough and … they drove to Saint John themselves instead of waiting.”
Jordan and his wife say the state of the Sussex hospital is top of mind as they try to decide who to vote for in this upcoming provincial election. Jordan says it’s the “biggest thing that affects us right now.”
“I heard a lot of horror stories in the hospital lately and a real eye-opener,” he said.
“Rents have doubled and there’s no housing, nowhere for anybody to live. Price of food has doubled everywhere. We’ve got all the same issues everybody else does, except we don’t have a hospital that we can depend on. And we should.”
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