New Brunswick — In a stunning announcement by the provincial government today, the premier has mandated that emergencies requiring medical attention are now banned in rural New Brunswick once the sun sets.
Premier Blaine Higgs backed the decision up with what he considered solid facts.
“Rural New Brunswickers are mostly farmers and go to sleep early so they can get up and milk cows in the morning. Therefore the chances of them requiring any type of medical treatment during the night has to be close to zero, doesn’t it?”
When contacted, a spokesperson for the Department of Health indicated that the Regional Health Authorities believe this will ultimately serve to improve internal metrics and KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) that had been pointing to an increase in wait times.
“This comes as result of direct consultation and engagement of the citizens of this province,” said Ashley Osborne with the Department of Health. “We’ve heard that wait times were a problem and we’ve responded accordingly. In various conversations with community groups it became evident that people were upset with the time spent waiting to see an ER physician, and thus we felt that if we locked the patients out of the hospitals at night, that it would dramatically decrease their time in the various waiting rooms across the province.
“Wait times are not calculated into the metrics if you aren’t actually in the hospital!” she added triumphantly.
To balance things out across the board, the Conservative government consulted one of the French/English maps they have posted in every minister’s office to make sure that anglophone and francophone areas were hit equally.
According to one minister, who would only speak to us anonymously, it was easy to divvy up the cuts because some of the hospital names he could read and the others had a bunch of accents and hyphens in them.
He shared with us a copy of the list produced by the Department of Health. “Okay, English Hospitals: Sussex Health Centre, Sackville Memorial Hospital, Grand Falls General Hospital.
“And I’m pretty sure these are French ones — look at the names, one of them even talks about Jesus! There’s Hotel-Dieu of St. Joseph in Perth-Andover, Stella-Maris-de-Kent Hospital in Sainte-Anne-de-Kent, Enfant-Jésus Hospital in Caraquet.”
Rural New Brunswickers are understandably furious that their health emergencies can only happen when the sun is out.
“I’m always going for a rip on the Skidoo around 3 or 4 a.m., and half the time I’m right liquored-up,” said Billy Matheson, 28. “After dark is when all my ‘health emergencies’ take place — are any vet offices open at night? Are they allowed to work on humans? And if not, what am I supposed to do if I get smoked by a tree in the dark? Stitch it up myself?”
Others with actual valid concerns weighed in, too.
“I have a hereditary heart problem, and if I can’t get in to the emergency room when something inevitably goes wrong, I could die,” said Darla Jones, 64. “Is this really what it’s come to in New Brunswick? I’m gonna have to move to Ontario.”
The government recommends that anyone who can’t resist having a health emergency in the nighttime consider relocating to an urban area or a province that’s less fucked up.