Concordia Hospital once faced the closure of their emergency room; now, months after preparing for such a change, they've been informed of yet another change in plans.

Rather than closing Concordia's ER, the Manitoba government has said that it will be converted into an urgent care facility.

Darlene Jackson, president of the Manitoba Nurses Union (MNU), said that the current situation facing the hospital is now entirely different than the plan first laid out by the government regarding the consolidation of Winnipeg's health care facilities.

"The original plan was that the ER would totally close and that they would have a walk-in clinic," Jackson explained.

The shift in thinking to convert Concordia's ER into an urgent care centre means that non-life threatening issues such as fractures and sutures will be able to receive treatment from the facility, however, significant limitations on the extent of treatment that an urgent care facility can provide means many cases will need to be sent elsewhere.

"There's only so many issues that an urgent care facility can deal with."

Jackson says that the switch to urgent care was scheduled to take place on June 25, only four weeks after the time they were notified of the change.

"I had concerns about it happening that quickly," the president said. "We had totally made our plans, nurses had made plans to go into other emergency departments in the city."

Then the announcement that plans would change last Thursday revealed further complications, stating that Concordia's transition would occur June 3.

"I thought the entire plan for consolidation and transformation had been much too rushed."

A complete reversal of plans in such a short period of time, coupled with "absolutely no details" provided to the MNU left Jackson more than hesitant on the transition. Following a meeting on the subject last Friday, the president says there are still very few details on the situation.

What is known is that there will be no decrease in staff at Concordia until June 25, which Jackson says is "okay.

"Concordia Hospital ER has a lot of vacancies, so they were basically running as an urgent care centre and the nurses that were bringing the staffing baseline up to emergency were doing it on overtime," she explained. For the time being, new schedules will be made around the staff Concordia has been able to maintain.

Further decisions will be made by nurses on their own positions later this month.

Jackson understands the difficulty nurses have been facing in making arrangements regarding their own employment as a result of the initial plan to close Concordia's ER.

"Everybody needs to have some security in where they're going and what they're doing. The staff knew that they were going to work as normal today in their emergency department [and that it] was going to be converted into urgent care, but beyond that, a lot of the nurses don't know what the plan is, they don't know what is going to happen.

Jackson shared that while the hospital is doing its best to accommodate the changes, she still wants an opportunity for direct care providers to have a seat at the table in discussions focused on the future of Concordia and Manitoba's health care.

"We've been left out of the entire plan and it's just evident that this plan has been too quick, that there hasn't been enough planning and groundwork laid, and it's evident with this change that the government has realized that as well."