And so it begins. The people of BC are starting to see what third-world health care looks like, as staffing shortages closed BC emergency rooms over the Labour Day weekend. A similar problem was reported over the BC Day weekend, during the first weekend of August. In fact, five BC hospital emergency rooms belonging to the Interior Health Authority were closed during the recent long weekend, because they were not enough emergency doctors to man them. Don't get sick at the weekend then, in 100 Mile House, Nicola Valley, Lillooet, Cariboo Memorial or the South Okanagan.These closures are part of a growing and deadly trend for BC hospitals.Emergency room closures at 100 Mile House and Williams Lake forced residents to travel long distances to other communities for help. In the Interior Health Administrative Region, 15,000 people don't have a doctor, so they rely on the emergency department for services.The sad truth is that in July, there were more than two dozen emergency room interruptions in July, with ten of those closures happening at Cariboo Memorial Hospital in Williams Lake.Throughout August, communities in northern B.C. experienced eight emergency room closures and diversions of Northern Health facilities. Emergency rooms in Fort St. John, Chetwynd, Dawson Creek, and Fort Nelson announced temporary closures totalling 107 hours throughout the month, each lasting 11 to 29 hours at a time. This is at least an improvement over July, when these communities experienced 22 diversions of medical services totalling 317 hours.Many are calling the situation intolerable.Provincial health minister Adrian Dix says everything possible is being done to fix it. Dix said the province has hired hundreds of doctors and nurses qualified to work in emergency rooms. Good, but in many parts of BC, people are still being diverted from emergency facilities.Part of this can be laid at the federal door. Trudeau’s immigration debacle hurt healthcare systems across the country. Regulatory arrangements and the “paperwork burden” have made the family doctor system brittle. The NDP are playing catch-up but they have already burned the budget elsewhere.The NDP doesn’t seem to know what to do. Experts say years of chronic underfunding and inadequate planning have consequences. If we continue to throw money at the same failing administrative structure, it will not provide a different or better outcome.One of the historical reasons for the disruption is basic planned understaffing. This leads to heavier workloads, poorer care, and increased staff strain from health and safety risks. Consequently, professionals are experiencing negative physical and mental effects, including stress and anxiety. Burnout and negative coping strategies have increased, and patient care is compromised.It wasn't always this way.In 1976, Canada had seven hospital beds per 1,000 people. But by 2024, that number had fallen to 2.6 beds per 1,000 people. A previous report by the Canadian Medical Association Journal found Canada had the fewest doctors per capita among OECD countries. Over time, discriminatory financing rules have produced a system that lacks the required incentive culture.Trouble also developed over time as provinces sought to control costs by rationing the number of doctors that could get a billing number and visiting rights to a hospital. The strategy was that fewer doctors would generate fewer service demand expenses on the system. It was a faulty, cruel logic, and the backlogs from the general population did not go away. Provincial governments also rationed training residency spots, a front-end loading restriction for new doctors.The province used the same strategies for elective surgeries until community outrage boiled over, and BC was forced to buy service from Washington State by sending some patients there.The healthcare system has become so strained that patients seeking urgent care are simply walking out of emergency rooms due to excessive wait times. A few have died sitting in the emergency waiting room.BC usually does not admit or reveal unfavourable data. However, it was learned from Quebec, where they break the Canada Healthcare financial rules and get away with it, that between April 2023 and February 2024, a total of 3,265,349 patients visited emergency rooms, and 11.5% left before seeing a physician because the waits were so long.The NDP have been in power long enough to be held accountable, as this debacle is happening on their watch. If the government priorities and incentives were right and they built an economy that could support a modern system, the challenges would be manageable. In the short term, the provincial government cannot tax and spend its way out of a dilemma they have allowed.The unconscionable banning of healthcare providers over the phony vaccination rules greatly hurt the BC system, and it still has not fully recovered.Building healthcare capacity takes time, as does ensuring continuity and predictability at all levels. We should also follow various European models that do not penalize people who wish to spend their own discretionary money on healthcare within Canada.This, sadly, has yet to begin... it is only the problems that are starting to look beyond the NDP's capacity to deal with.
And so it begins. The people of BC are starting to see what third-world health care looks like, as staffing shortages closed BC emergency rooms over the Labour Day weekend. A similar problem was reported over the BC Day weekend, during the first weekend of August. In fact, five BC hospital emergency rooms belonging to the Interior Health Authority were closed during the recent long weekend, because they were not enough emergency doctors to man them. Don't get sick at the weekend then, in 100 Mile House, Nicola Valley, Lillooet, Cariboo Memorial or the South Okanagan.These closures are part of a growing and deadly trend for BC hospitals.Emergency room closures at 100 Mile House and Williams Lake forced residents to travel long distances to other communities for help. In the Interior Health Administrative Region, 15,000 people don't have a doctor, so they rely on the emergency department for services.The sad truth is that in July, there were more than two dozen emergency room interruptions in July, with ten of those closures happening at Cariboo Memorial Hospital in Williams Lake.Throughout August, communities in northern B.C. experienced eight emergency room closures and diversions of Northern Health facilities. Emergency rooms in Fort St. John, Chetwynd, Dawson Creek, and Fort Nelson announced temporary closures totalling 107 hours throughout the month, each lasting 11 to 29 hours at a time. This is at least an improvement over July, when these communities experienced 22 diversions of medical services totalling 317 hours.Many are calling the situation intolerable.Provincial health minister Adrian Dix says everything possible is being done to fix it. Dix said the province has hired hundreds of doctors and nurses qualified to work in emergency rooms. Good, but in many parts of BC, people are still being diverted from emergency facilities.Part of this can be laid at the federal door. Trudeau’s immigration debacle hurt healthcare systems across the country. Regulatory arrangements and the “paperwork burden” have made the family doctor system brittle. The NDP are playing catch-up but they have already burned the budget elsewhere.The NDP doesn’t seem to know what to do. Experts say years of chronic underfunding and inadequate planning have consequences. If we continue to throw money at the same failing administrative structure, it will not provide a different or better outcome.One of the historical reasons for the disruption is basic planned understaffing. This leads to heavier workloads, poorer care, and increased staff strain from health and safety risks. Consequently, professionals are experiencing negative physical and mental effects, including stress and anxiety. Burnout and negative coping strategies have increased, and patient care is compromised.It wasn't always this way.In 1976, Canada had seven hospital beds per 1,000 people. But by 2024, that number had fallen to 2.6 beds per 1,000 people. A previous report by the Canadian Medical Association Journal found Canada had the fewest doctors per capita among OECD countries. Over time, discriminatory financing rules have produced a system that lacks the required incentive culture.Trouble also developed over time as provinces sought to control costs by rationing the number of doctors that could get a billing number and visiting rights to a hospital. The strategy was that fewer doctors would generate fewer service demand expenses on the system. It was a faulty, cruel logic, and the backlogs from the general population did not go away. Provincial governments also rationed training residency spots, a front-end loading restriction for new doctors.The province used the same strategies for elective surgeries until community outrage boiled over, and BC was forced to buy service from Washington State by sending some patients there.The healthcare system has become so strained that patients seeking urgent care are simply walking out of emergency rooms due to excessive wait times. A few have died sitting in the emergency waiting room.BC usually does not admit or reveal unfavourable data. However, it was learned from Quebec, where they break the Canada Healthcare financial rules and get away with it, that between April 2023 and February 2024, a total of 3,265,349 patients visited emergency rooms, and 11.5% left before seeing a physician because the waits were so long.The NDP have been in power long enough to be held accountable, as this debacle is happening on their watch. If the government priorities and incentives were right and they built an economy that could support a modern system, the challenges would be manageable. In the short term, the provincial government cannot tax and spend its way out of a dilemma they have allowed.The unconscionable banning of healthcare providers over the phony vaccination rules greatly hurt the BC system, and it still has not fully recovered.Building healthcare capacity takes time, as does ensuring continuity and predictability at all levels. We should also follow various European models that do not penalize people who wish to spend their own discretionary money on healthcare within Canada.This, sadly, has yet to begin... it is only the problems that are starting to look beyond the NDP's capacity to deal with.
