The strain on British Columbia’s health care is back in the spotlight, this time on Vancouver Island where a clinic for children who need urgent care is set to close.
The Urgent Pediatric Assessment Clinic at Victoria General Hospital opened in 2019, with the goal of quickly matching sick children with the right specialist and reducing wait times.
It’s a resource that new Victoria mother Nicole Herron said was a lifeline when her five-month-old daughter Blair began to show suspected gastrointestinal symptoms this summer.
“(She) had like really bad colic, seemed to have a lot of reflux and as well as like food sensitivities to what I was eating,” she said.
After an initial trip to the ER, Herron was referred to the clinic where she was able to spend some time with a doctor and determine there was nothing wrong with the infant.
“It was a huge relief just to be able to have a problem with your child and then go very quickly, see a professional who really listened to you and alleviated our concerns, like I said, and just kind of reassured us that things are on the right track because it’s really easy when things are not going as planned with your baby to kind of spiral and go down that worry path,” she said.
But since the clinic opened, doctors have reported an overwhelming workload, staff burnout and trouble retaining workers.
The facility is now now set to close on Sept. 1.
“What they’ve told us as we’ve been working with them over the last several months is the work the way we’ve done it is just not sustainable anymore, that we need to provide a solution where we decrease the workload on individual pediatricians, and have more pediatricians on site so the work is more sustainable,” said Dr. Ben Williams, chief medical officer at Island Health.
The Opposition BC Conservatives laid the closure at the feet of the province’s NDP government.
“Why is it that under this government we always arrive at another closure or interruption of service? In this case, contract negotiations should have happened before any kind of service cancellation. But now, referrals to the UPAC already ended as of August 15,” North Island MLA and BC Conservative health critic Dr. Anna Kindy said in a statement.
“Now that this clinic will be closing indefinitely, an already-overburdened ER physician will have to triage and diagnose.”
Williams said he expects the clinic’s closure to be temporary.
Until a solution is found, parents are being asked to take their children to the regular emergency room to be referred to a pediatrician if necessary.
Herron said she hopes the facility is back up and running sooner than later, so that other parents have access to the same services as she did.
“I feel so fortunate to have been able to go and get that immediate care for our daughter,” she said.
“But yeah, I think of all the other parents whose babies might have, or young children might have issues, and it’s a long wait to get into a pediatrician in town.”