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River Valley Health officials say the closure of emergency and in-patient services at Plaster Rock's Tobique Valley Hospital may increase the workload at surrounding health-care facilities.

Dean Cummings, River Valley Health's director of community relations and primary care north, said the health authority will monitor emergency room traffic at nearby facilities to determine whether staffing levels need to be increased to handle patient overflow.

He said now that emergency and in-patient services have been halted in Plaster Rock, he believes people will make the trip to nearby facilities for service.

"There will be some impact, I would expect," he said.

"Patients will be going to either (Perth-Andover) or the Upper River Valley Hospital for their service. What we'll be doing is we'll be monitoring the impact on those two facilities and see if there is much of an increase in the workload."

Cummings said he doubts the situation will require the health authority to begin taking urgent action.

"If there is (an increased workload), I believe that we can address the increase with our existing staff in our facilities after we monitor it for a period of time," he said.

"If we feel that we need to increase the staff then we'll certainly look at doing that."

Plaster Rock Mayor Judy St. Peter said the closure may endanger the lives of people living in her community.

"It's a big worry because we have woodsworkers out in the woods and it would probably take them a half hour to get just to Plaster Rock, and then they will have to travel (farther)," she said.

She said the region is grateful to still have access to services such as X-rays, physiotherapy, respiratory therapy and others, but those are services people can wait for.

She said it's important to receive care as soon as possible during an emergency.

"Sometimes we can't get clear to Grand Falls or (Perth-Andover)," she said.

"They're taking our safety net."

Cummings said River Valley Health had no choice but to change the model of care at the Tobique Valley Hospital after two of the facility's physicians left the region and another decided not to continue offering his services in the ER.

He said the health authority recruited two family physicians to the area under the condition that they not have to practice medicine in the emergency room. One doctor has begun practising and another is scheduled to start in September.

"That was sort of one of the stipulations in order to get these physicians," said Cummings.

"They indicated that they're not interested in working in an emergency department. We had been actively recruiting for about the last two to 2 1/2 years to Plaster Rock, trying to recruit a (physician) to add to the existing staff to provide coverage in the emergency department and look after in-patients, and we have not been successful."

St. Peter said the Liberal government campaigned on a promise to protect emergency services in her community.

She said that since the government is having trouble attracting doctors to Plaster Rock, the village has decided to help the Liberals with their recruitment effort.

"What they're telling us is that this had to happen because they could not find doctors to work in our emergency room, so our village council ... will make a motion to form an ad-hoc recruiting committee," she said.

"We will actively look for ER doctors. And if we find these doctors, we will go to these people that made the promises and tell them we've solved their problem."