Health officials in B.C. are facing growing pressure over a “crisis” in the province’s emergency rooms.
Ongoing and sporadic ER closures have become all too common in rural and remote B.C. communities, and the problem has recently flared up in the Lower Mainland as well.
In August alone, B.C. has witnessed nine ER closures across the province, the majority of them in the north.
The Mission Memorial Hospital saw its ER close overnight on Sunday due to a staffing shortage, while the Delta Hospital saw its ER close suddenly on Monday night when a single physician called in sick.
It was the third ER closure in Delta this year and has drawn harsh words from the city’s mayor and council.
“Clearly the status quo isn’t working. Fraser Health has replaced their CEO. They’ve fired their board chair. And yet still we have closures for a prominent hospital in the middle of the Lower Mainland,” Delta Coun. Dylan Kruger told Global News.
In Kruger’s view, the problem boils down to simple dollars and cents.
Last year, Fraser Health did receive more funding from the Ministry of Health than neighbouring Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) —$5.2 billion compared to $4.87 billion, respectively.
But the Fraser Health region is vastly more populous, home to nearly two million people, compared to 1.25 million in the VCH region.
Kruger believes that per-capita funding disparity is at the heart of the staffing problems.
“Fraser Health Authority has 39 per cent of the population for British Columbia, and yet just 28 per cent of funding, this is a funding gap that’s resulting in an inability to hire doctors, hire nurses, and other health care professionals, and keep critical services open like emergency rooms,” he said.
“It’s deeply concerning for this, this is the fastest-growing area in British Columbia.”
Elected officials aren’t the only ones raising the alarm.
Doctors of B.C. president Dr. Charlene Lui described the health care system as being “in crisis.”
“We’re seeing more and more emergency room closures, and it is it is a concern that it’s become an acceptable circumstance — and it really is not acceptable,” she said.
“Physicians really want to give our patients the timely and quality care that they deserve, and if they can’t deliver that care as they would like to and feel that the patients then it causes a great deal of moral distress and burnout.”
Lui said B.C.’s ERs are facing a complex problem with pressures from many sides. Those include patients who come to the hospital because they don’t have family doctors, patients needing prolonged care who end up in the ER because of a shortage of beds, and patients taking up beds who can’t be discharged because they don’t have a primary care provider in the community.
Cutting red tape to make it easier for doctors to practice in different health authorities could be one part of a solution, she said.
But she said doctors want to sit down with the Ministry of Health and hammer out a more comprehensive plan that can address urgent problems some regions face without harming others.
“A province-wide stabilization plan is really important,” she said.
“We do face the possibility of trying to fix one community, and that actually having an adverse effect on another community. So that’s why we’re really looking to a private province-wide plan as opposed to trying to fix a problem here and causing problems in other areas.”
In a statement, the Fraser Health Authority apologized for the recent ER closures, but said it had contingency plans in place to ensure anyone who presented at the hospital was triaged and, if necessary, transferred to another hospital.
“Whenever there is a gap in Emergency Department physician coverage, our teams work right up to the last possible moment to secure staffing and avoid service interruptions,” it said.
“It is important to note our efforts to fill shifts and prevent emergency department service interruptions are almost always successful.”
Fraser Health added it is “actively working to stabilize emergency services” by addressing staff shortages, and had recently received 154 applications from U.S. health care workers, following the province’s cross-border ad blitz.
The Ministry of Health did not respond to a request for comment by deadline.