Emergency and Urgent Care Centres
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As per the Hospital Improvement Plan, the Emergency Room (ER) Departments at Port Colborne Site and Fort Erie's Douglas Memorial Site have converted to 24-hour Urgent Care Centres and in St. Catharines the Ontario Street Site (155 Ontario St.) Prompt Care Centre name has changed to Urgent Care Centre.
- Port Colborne Site's ER Department converted to an Urgent Care Centre July 06 2009
- Douglas Memorial Site's ER Department converted to an Urgent Care Centre Sept. 28 2009
- Both Centres are open 7 days a week, 24 hours a day
- St. Catharines’ Ontario Street Site Urgent Care Centre is open 7 days a week, 14 hours a day (8 a.m. to 10 p.m.)
- The same doctors/nurses staffing these Urgent Care Centres have the same training as ER staff, with the same equipment - they can handle any case that comes in
- About 95% of the patients who now come to these sites for their emergency care will continue to be served in Fort Erie and Port Colborne. Serious emergency and life-threatening cases will go by ambulance or car to full-service ERs in Welland or Niagara Falls.
- Under a new agreement, ambulances will take non-emergency cases to Douglas Memorial Site. This service will be extended to Port Colborne Site’s Urgent Care Centre in October/09.
- For Port Colborne and Fort Erie sites, the main differences in the service are that ambulances no longer bring emergency patients to these sites and patients are no longer be admitted directly to inpatient beds at these sites
- As has been the case for the past 2 years, for specialist consultations and sophisticated diagnostic tests, patients are transferred to a larger Niagara Health site
Please take a few moments to learn more about the services by reviewing the sections listed on the left.