Three Island hospitals could still get outdoor overdose-prevention sites, after an Island Health plan for the sites was scuttled by the government in the spring, ahead of the provincial election.
Addictions doctors in Victoria and Nanaimo staged pop-up overdose-prevention sites outside Royal Jubilee and Nanaimo Regional General Hospital last week to raise awareness of the lack of such services, which they say will save lives of patients who might otherwise be sent off site to use drugs and end up dying.
The Health Ministry said Monday that it’s “currently taking action” to establish minimum service standards for overdose-prevention sites across the province, both in hospitals and in the community.
“These standards will establish baseline operational and facility requirements for all provincially funded, fixed and mobile, overdose prevention services in B.C.,” said the ministry, suggesting that once its review is completed, future sites could be considered where appropriate, including in hospitals.
Island Health confidential planning documents obtained by the Times Colonist show that three outdoor overdose-prevention sites planned as pilots at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, Royal Jubilee Hospital and North Island Hospitals’ Campbell River and District site were paused in April when the government confirmed a zero-tolerance policy for drug use in hospitals.
Those sites could be reconsidered in the future, pending the outcome of the province’s review, the Health Ministry said Monday.
The overdose-prevention sites were to be open seven days a week, seven hours a day, and be staffed by five new staff members, including a manager, co-ordinator and three peer-support workers.
The outdoor sites would include two tents for drug consumption and an electric van for staff and storage that would later be replaced — once the location was confirmed — with a retrofitted office trailer.
In addition to gowns and gloves, personal protection equipment would include powered air-purifying respirators.
As a pilot, the program would include a detailed evaluation plan.
Nanaimo Regional General Hospital had been expected to be the first site to open last summer, adjacent to the hospital’s rehabilitation centre entrance, with tents placed on the grass easily accessible via a paved path, according to the documents.
Until last November, Victoria General Hospital was to be one of the three hospitals in the pilot, but it was later replaced by the Campbell River hospital.
An update from April, however, said: “All work paused based on government direction.”
According to the Health Ministry, the pause was to look at standardizing services across all sites in hospitals and communities.
Nurses and patients were complaining of patient drug use or possession in hospital rooms and halls that was harming staff, other patients and visitors.
The B.C. Nurses’ Union said it was in favour of harm-reduction approaches to reduce toxic drug overdose deaths in and around hospitals, but slammed health authorities for failing to do it in a way that kept nursing staff safe.
In setting up pop-up overdose prevention sites outside Nanaimo Regional General Hospital and Royal Jubilee Hospital last week, doctors Ryan Herriot and Jess Wilder said they had waited long enough for the promised overdose-prevention sites for patients.
On the second day of the pop-up outside Nanaimo’s hospital, a man who had locked himself in the bathroom of the hospital’s emergency room after the pop-up service had closed for the night overdosed and died at about 4 a.m. last Tuesday, as no one was able to come to his aid in time.
“The 20 minutes of resuscitation and Narcan came too late, because he had no option but to hide away behind a locked door,” said Wilder, a family doctor and addictions medicine specialist, who knew the patient.
The group calling itself Doctors for Safer Drug Policy released a statement on Monday calling on B.C.’s new Health Minister Josie Osborne “to direct health authorities to immediately implement hospital-based OPS.”
Herriot, a group spokesperson and addictions medicine specialist in Victoria, said the Island Health documents showing it planned for the overdose prevention sites at three hospitals and then quickly rescinded them “shows that the government can alter course with great rapidity.”
“We implore it to again alter course to follow the evidence and make us all safe.”
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