At 10 p.m. on June 23, Kelly Szaniszlo’s son and his pregnant fiancée tried to have their baby delivered at Kitimat General Hospital, but were told to drive the 40 minutes to Mills Memorial Hospital in Terrace.
At Mills Memorial, the pair were told that hospital didn’t have the staff to deliver their son, either.
Finally, after another round trip, which included being again turned away by Kitimat General, a doctor in Terrace was able to help the couple deliver their baby in the early morning hours of June 24.
“Luckily the cord wasn’t wrapped around his neck, luckily there was no stress on the tube while they’re driving back and forth,” said Szaniszlo. “I’ll bet you one or both [of the mom and the baby] would have died. Didn’t even check them. They just kept sending them away.”
B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix is fielding renewed questions about emergency room closures throughout the Interior and northern reaches of the province, a potential issue for the NDP come election time in October.
In just the past few weeks, ERs have been closed overnight, or even for several days, in Dawson Creek, Kitimat, Chetwynd, Oliver, Williams Lake and Fort Nelson.
Figures compiled by the Opposition BC United suggest there have been 216 or more ER closures in B.C. so far this year, including 72 in July alone.
Dix said the province did its best to prevent closures.
“The challenge of this summer, we expected going into the year. So we identified every shift that has been a problem and 92 per cent of those have been filled,” he said in Victoria on Wednesday.
Dix also cited the NDP plan that includes incentives for nurses and better pay for family physicians as ways the government is trying to attract health-care workers to rural and remote areas.
BC United Health critic Shirley Bond said that the province can tout its efforts to improve health care all it wants, but that does not change the results on the ground.
She said B.C. is a big province and the NDP need to start governing for everyone, not just those living in the major urban centres of Metro Vancouver and Victoria. Of the closures BC United counted, only one fell in the Coastal or Fraser Health regions.
“Living in rural and remote communities, you feel like you simply don’t matter,” said the Prince George-Valemount MLA. “We often have to travel hundreds of kilometres to find the emergency care that we need and deserve.”
Saanich Peninsula Hospital’s emergency room has also been closed overnight. Other hospitals in the Island Health region have also seen closures, including in Port Hardy and Port McNeill and on Coromorant Island.
Conservative Leader John Rustad believes the solution lies in expanding training opportunities for doctors and nurses to rural communities so they can learn on the job. He also said the province should make greater efforts to streamline credentials for foreign-trained health-care workers, something the NDP have been pursuing.
“We had some problems with diversions of ERs in Fort St. James, there is a new hospital that is about to be built in Fort St. James, but there’s no plan for staffing,” Rustad said. “I suspect the challenges will continue.”
One of the worst-hit communities over the past two years has been the booming resource town of Kitimat.
Mayor Phil Germuth said Kitimat General has had 58 ER closures this year, far surpassing the 44 last year.
Despite this, the mayor is optimistic that the declining number of closures in recent months is an indication efforts by Northern Health to attract fill-in physicians and nurses is working.
“Last year was terrible. From basically August and September on, it was almost closed as much as it was open,” Germuth said of the hospital.
“However, they’ve been doing a good job in alleviating that. In January we had 20, February we had 16, However, in May, we’re down to five. In June, we had one and July we had two.”
Those closures and staffing shortages have taken their toll, however, with patients being diverted to Terrace on a regular basis.
Oliver Mayor Martin Johansen believes the province has made some solid steps with the pay boost for family physicians, but understands it is not going to be a complete solution.
“I was pretty clear when I talked about it, that it wasn’t the silver bullet that was going to fix the problem, and we were still going to have closures,” he said.
So far this year, South Okanagan General Hospital has had its ER close 20 times, but Johansen said the town is working with Interior Health on building new housing for workers and providing additional incentives for the fill-in physicians and nurses who fill 40 to 45 per cent of the hospital’s shifts.
However, Merritt Mayor Mike Goetz said he is frustrated by the lack of communication from the Ministry of Health and the Interior Health Region on what is being done about staff shortages.
He said he has had 19 conversations with Dix on health care issues in Merritt but has yet to see the minister put forward a plan to fix them.
Three weeks ago, Goetz sent the ministry a bill for almost $104,000, seeking payment for each of the 19 times the ER was closed in 2023 as well as the added pressures that puts on first responders.
“We’re just asking to see a plan, whether it’s a plan that’s good or bad,” he said. “We can all get behind a plan, if we know what it is. We can all work toward it and help get there, but we’re just not seeing it,” he said.
— With a file from the Times Colonist
