Montreal-area maternity ward closing for 3 months due to staff shortage

A doctor performs an ultrasound scan on a pregnant woman at a hospital in Chicago, Aug. 7, 2018. (AP Photo/Teresa Crawford, File)

A shortage of obstetrician-gynecologists has led to the temporary closure of the maternity ward at a hospital on Montreal’s North Shore, which will redirect pregnant women to another hospital about 23 kilometres away.

When the ward closes at the Saint-Eustache Hospital at 8 a.m. on Dec. 5, patients will be referred to the Cité-de-la-Santé Hospital in Laval.

“No action is required on the part of pregnant women who are scheduled to give birth at Saint-Eustache Hospital. They will be informed by the health-care professional monitoring their pregnancy,” the Laurentians’ regional health authority announced Monday in a news release.

The closure will last approximately three months.

In the meantime, the regional health centre in the Laurentians, the Centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux des Laurentides, said it will try to recruit more staff to ensure adequate care.

Dr. Élie Boustani, the medical and professional services director for the CISSS des Laurentides, told CTV News that the ward has faced staffing challenges for several months.

“Here, in a hospital that is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, we are currently unable to cover every day of the week because we are understaffed. There are several absences for various reasons within the team, and, unfortunately, to avoid opening and closing like this every week, we have made the decision for the good of the patients to transfer activities,” Boustani said.

In Saint-Eustache, the maternity ward has eight positions, three of which are full-time. Boustani explained that the combination of one current vacancy and other absences, it’s difficult to keep it open every day to serve the population.

He said expectant mothers who are due to give birth in the coming weeks will be contacted about the situation. If they don’t want to go to Laval, they can also go to other nearby maternity wards at the Pierre-Le Gardeur Hospital or the Saint-Jérôme Hospital.

Boustani couldn’t provide a guarantee that the Saint-Eustache maternity ward would reopen in three months.

“As soon as I have a few more gynecologists, we will reopen Saint-Eustache. The challenge will remain to find gynecologists. So I can’t offer any guarantees at this time, but we are doing everything in our power to reopen as soon as possible,” he said.

Publicly available data shows that, as of Aug. 26, there were 41 vacancies across Quebec in the field of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Quebec had among the highest vacancies in the health sector: StatsCan

On Monday, Statistics Canada published a report that revealed Quebec and the Territories have the highest vacancy rates in health-related occupations in Canada.

The vacancy rate in the Territories was 7.8 per cent in 2024, while in Quebec it was 7.4 per cent. Comparatively, Ontario’s vacancy rate was 5.6 per cent.

The lowest vacancy rate in health-related jobs was in the Prairie provinces at 4.2 per cent.

Two groups of health workers — registered nurses, registered psychiatric nurses, and nurse practitioners, as well as personal support workers (PSWs) — made up the largest share of job vacancies in health-related occupations across Canada. Those two groups comprised 53 per cent of vacancies, which is down from 53 per cent in 2016, and remote regions saw the highest share of nurse and PSW shortages.

The data also shows that while employment in health-care occupations has steadily increased in Canada in recent years, the rise in vacancies “has been even more pronounced.”

Health-care related vacancies made up 15 per cent of all job vacancies in Canada last year, more than double the rate in 2016 (6.5 per cent).

“This indicates that increases in supply have not kept pace with rising demand, and unmet labour demand remains a significant concern,” StasCan says.

The agency says that, with a growing demand for health care due to an aging population and the rising disease burden, “the gap between supply and demand for health care workers is expected to increase for several primary care professions.”