Northern Health reports four northeast B.C. ER closures in last month of 2025

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — The Christmas season brought snow and ER closures to the northeast with Northern Health closing northeast B.C. emergency departments four times in December.

Compared to November, when Northern Health reported three closures totalling 25.5 hours in Dawson Creek, Fort Nelson and Chetwynd, this month emergency rooms across northeast B.C. closed four times for a total of 39.5 hours. 

Both the Chetwynd General Hospital and Fort St. John Hospital emergency departments closed on December 25th, with Chetwynd closing from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m., and Fort St. John closed from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m.

On December 27th, Northern Health announced the Fort Nelson General Hospital emergency department would be closing from 9:42 a.m. to 2 p.m., not citing a reason for the closure.

Northern Health narrowly avoided an overlapping double closure on December 28th. The health authority announced on Facebook the Dawson Creek and District Hospital’s emergency room would be closed from 12 p.m. to 10 p.m. that day and the Fort St. John Hospital’s ER would be diverted from 5 p.m. on December 28th to 7 a.m. the next day. 

Just before the Fort St. John Hospital’s diversion was set to begin, the health authority reported it would remain open as staffing had been found to cover the gap.

According to data provided by the Ministry of Health, the Fort St. John Hospital operated at 127 per cent capacity in the 2024-25 fiscal year, making it the fifth most crowded hospital in the province. 

Northern Health later stated the flurry of Christmas closures was due to a combination of “known shift vacancies” and lack of “scheduled staffing being available on short notice.” 

The Fort St. John Hospital’s birthing centre also closed twice overnight during the week of Christmas, first from 6 a.m. on December 22nd to 8 a.m. on December 23rd and then again from 4 a.m. to 6 p.m. on December 28th. Northern Health later told Energeticcity.ca the closures were due to “staffing challenges.”

The numbers for the last month of 2025 mean emergency rooms in the northeast closed 46 times this year for more than 600 hours in total. The Fort St. John Hospital’s birthing centre also closed five times for a total of 53.5 hours, and the Northern Health Virtual Clinic experienced one outage of 26 hours.