Summerside hospital’s ICU will be back up and running this summer, province says

PEIP.E.I.’s health minister says the province will have enough staff in place to restore Prince County Hospital’s intensive-care unit by this summer. Prince County Hospital’s intensive-care unit has been shut down since May 2023Stephen Brun · CBC News · Posted: Apr 10, 2025 5:30 PM EDT | Last Updated: 6 hours agoP.E.I. Health Minister Mark McLane says the province has hired a sixth internal medicine doctor who will start work at PCH later this year. (Steve Bruce/CBC)P.E.I.’s health minister says the province will have enough staff to restore Prince County Hospital’s intensive-care unit by this summer. The announcement was part of the Progressive Conservative government’s 2025-26 budget address Thursday in the legislative assembly. Finance Minister Jill Burridge hailed “the return of full-time internal medicine coverage at Prince County Hospital, allowing their ICU to formally reopen this summer.”Health Minister Mark McLane later told CBC News the province has hired a sixth internal medicine doctor who’s expected to start at the Summerside hospital later this year. “We certainly won’t say no to any [additional] internal medicine physicians,” McLane said. “They are very difficult to recruit and to hire.” The eight-bed intensive-care unit at Prince County Hospital has been closed since May 2023 due to a lack of specialized staff. Mark McLane says this is an exciting week for Prince County Hospital, but cautioned that there are still staffing shortages to address. (Rick Gibbs/CBC)Since then, more serious intensive-care cases have been handled at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown, 60 kilometres awayPCH had been operating an eight-bed progressive-care unit until January 2024, when Health P.E.I. cut the number of beds to four because there weren’t enough medical personnel to look after eight patients.That decision spurred a town hall meeting in Summerside last year that saw hundreds of residents turn out to vent their concern and frustration to provincial health officials. McLane said Thursday that the hospital still needs more staff like critical-care nurses and respiratory therapists, but he added that Health P.E.I. has hired a nurse practitioner to support the unit. “Critical-care nursing continues to be a shortage at the PCH,” McLane said. “At any one time, we need about eight to 13 critical-care nurses… to support the unit.” With files form Kerry Campbell