Officials have been singing the praises of the new emergency room at Chilliwack General Hospital (CGH) for months, but some seniors are finding it hard to get in the door.

The temporary entrance to the ER by the ambulance parking lot off Hodgins Avenue opens onto a small doctors' parking lot with no ramp for walkers, wheelchairs or those with trouble walking.

For seniors like Enid Kulesh, who has had to negotiate the entrance more than once while helping an elderly friend, that's a problem.

"I'm surprised at this huge oversight at a hospital particularly," she said "I realize it's only temporary, but illnesses aren't necessarily temporary."

Kulesh first ran into the problem two months ago when she was picking up her friend Elfrida Marlon-Lambert, who is 92 years old.

Since the main doors of the hospital were locked (they are locked at 9 p.m. every night), Kulesh had to pick her friend up at the temporary ER entrance.

Because of a painful bone infection in her foot, Marlon-Lambert, who uses a walker, had difficulty stepping off the curb.

To make matters worse, her purse fell to the ground unnoticed during the ordeal and was later recovered by a hospital employee from a group of teenagers who left the purse after running away with the money that was in it.

"People are waiting around there watching for things like that," said Kulesh.

She wrote an e-mail to hospital administration describing the ordeal and thanking hospital staff for recovering the purse, but there is still no ramp into the parking lot.

According to Elsie Duncan, clinical co-ordinator for the hospital redevelopment project, the problem is people are using the wrong parking lot.

If they park in the visitor parking lot around the side of the building by Mary Street, patients can reach the temporary ER entrance by using three ramps on a route that crosses the ambulance parking lot.

"It may not be as clear as it should be, but there is a way that you can do it," said Duncan.

She said installing a ramp in the doctors' lot was not feasible because the lot is too small and cars would back over the ramp.

But the trek from the visitor parking lot is too much for ailing seniors using walkers, according to Kulesh.

Even when patients use wheelchairs, the route from the visitors' lot to the temporary ER entrance is difficult, especially when patients are being helped by other seniors who have to cover the distance a number of times to get one of the hospital's loaner wheelchairs.

Doug May, who had to check his 90-year-old sister into the emergency room last Tuesday, opted to stop in the doctors' lot instead and needed help getting his sister into a wheelchair on the curb.

"I understood this was closer to the emergency department," he said, surprised not to find a ramp closer by.

Kulesh wonders why the hospital hasn't eliminated one of the stalls in the doctors' lot to make way for a ramp, but Duncan said that idea was rejected early on because parking at the hospital is scarce and because loading and unloading patients in the small lot was deemed unsafe.

"The minute you get cars and people in a small space like that, it's not safe," said Duncan.

With seniors like Kulesh and Day opting to use the lot anyway to avoid a long trek from the main entrance or the visitor parking lot, however, that hazard now appears compounded by the lack of a ramp.

Despite this, Duncan said the entrance has elicited few complaints since being opened in April and added concerns can be directed to site administrator Elma Pauls at 604-795-4141.

The temporary ER entrance will be in place until renovations are complete in September when it will be converted into a staff entrance.