By Ruby Pratka
Local Journalism Initiative
A year after the CIUSSS de l’Estrie-CHUS announced seasonal closures of the CLSCs in Brome Lake and Sutton and a partial closure of the CHSLD de Bedford, the CIUSSS de l’Estrie-CHUS has said similar closures have been avoided for this year, although there will be service reductions in some areas. The CIUSSS would not share a full list of closures and service reductions; according to a partial list obtained by the BCN, nursing services will be unavailable at the CLSC in Sutton from June 16 to Aug. 24, and lab services will be reduced. Lab services will also be reduced at the Bromont CLSC.
“Every year, we plan the summer period to ensure our staff have vacations while continuing to provide care and services to the population,” CIUSSS de l’Estrie-CHUS spokesperson Élizabeth Dubé said in a statement. “No CLSC in Estrie will be completely closed.”
More alarming to local health care professionals, one of the three operating rooms at Brome-Missisquoi-Perkins Hospital will be out of service this summer due to a shortage of respiratory therapists.
Dubé said BMP, “like many other [hospitals] in Quebec, has been facing a chronic shortage of respiratory therapists for several months.” The third operating room “will be closed during the summer to provide the teams with a well-deserved break. Exceptionally this year, the adjustments began on May 5, rather than mid-June, due to the shortage of respiratory therapists.”
“For more than a year, we’ve seen staff running out of steam,” said Dr. Anne-Patricia Prévost, a family doctor in Cowansville who is the president of the Association des médecins omnipraticiens d’Yamaska. “I think it was also closed for part of last summer, and they went to recruit some respiratory therapists from Sherbrooke, but this year, they weren’t able to have them.”
In Quebec hospitals, respiratory therapists help patients who are coming on and off ventilators, conduct tests, administer and adjust medication, monitor patients who are anesthetized and maintain respiratory support equipment. “Doctors and nurses are trained to do a lot of those tasks, but putting those tasks on their plate has an impact too,” Prévost said.
She said about five surgeries per day were normally conducted in the third operating room. “That makes 30 a week. If [the closure] lasts until October, that’s a lot of surgeries, a lot of people who will stay on waiting lists.”
“It’s a real shame – because of vacation and the personnel [shortage], they’re ‘undressing’ the regional centres to bring personnel to Sherbrooke to avoid service cuts there,” said Prévost, who attended an interprofessional meeting where the planned service modifications were presented. Prévost said the closure could potentially lead to bottlenecks at other area hospitals, and have painful consequences for patients and the health care system. “For the patient who needs a knee replacement, for example, we try physiotherapy and other things… but if they have to wait for two years, they’re moving less, they’re gaining weight, they can develop other complications … they’ll make more follow-up appointments and consume more medication … and this is taking time that we would give to new patients.”
Dubé said full operations at BMP are expected to resume in early fall, and that emergencies would be “taken care of without delay.” She noted that 11 respiratory therapists had been hired by the CIUSSS in the past week, with seven assigned to BMP.
No resumption of nursing services at CLSC Lac-Brome
There have been no nursing care services offered at the CLSC Lac-Brome since spring 2024. When the CLSC reopened in October 2024, it reopened for laboratory services only. At the time, CIUSSS spokesperson Nancy Corriveau told the BCN a consultative committee would be put in place to “clearly define the needs of the population and reassess our service offering.” That idea was ultimately scrapped and there are no plans to resume nursing care at the CLSC.
“Following a further assessment, we have decided not to create the announced community consultation committee,” Dubé said. “We have a duty to adapt our care and services according to the needs of the population and the context of our resources. Thus, we no longer have routine nursing care at the CLSC Lac-Brome service point, but we do have a [laboratory sample] collection service. For an appointment requiring routine nursing care, the population is always invited to contact the CLSC de Cowansville at (450) 266-4304, the CLSC de Sutton at (450) 538-3994 or the CLSC de Bromont at (450) 375-1692. These surrounding CLSCs are located approximately 20 minutes away by car.”
The loss of nursing care services in a town like Brome Lake is worrisome for Prévost. “This is a big deal, because we have a very large territory, and having services in the villages is important,” she said. “We have some transit, and we have medical transportation volunteers, but it’s not like a big city.”
Dubé said no major CHSLD closures were anticipated over the summer, but that “a few beds might not immediately be given to the next [resident] when they are freed up” at the CHSLD de Sutton.
Defending access to care in Bedford
After a series of closures and cutbacks in the past year, advocates for health care access in Bedford have formed a nonprofit to fight future cuts.
“The decline in healthcare services in the Bedford area over the past 10 years has prompted a reaction: the loss of three seniors’ residences, the retirement of two physicians who were almost miraculously replaced, the closure of CHSLD beds during summer 2024, the cancellation of the CHSLD expansion project in June 2024, not to mention the glaring lack of intermediate resources, are just a few examples of concern,” said Normand Deragon, spokesperson for the Bedford Pole Citizen Health Committee (BPCHC). “The result of our action [last year] is not so much what we gained, but rather, what we did not lose. For example, we now have two new doctors at our CLSC in replacement of recently retired physicians, and in contrast to last year, no beds will be closed at our CHSLD during the summer vacations. … As you say in English, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.”
“With a population where 25 per cent of residents are aged 65 or over, we are worried about what the future holds for our region. This explains the reason for our mobilization to safeguard healthcare services in the Bedford area,” said BPCHC president Pierrette Messier-Peet.
The new nonprofit plans to “explore the possibility” of bringing a new seniors’ residence to the area, and raise awareness of the services offered by the CLSC de Bedford and other local service providers.