The Glaring Problem – Continually Closed ER, Doctors Leaving Town

Do a quick Google News search on “doctors Prince Rupert” and you’ll notice two things. First, you will notice that back in March everyone was talking about the closed ER and doctors leaving town. Here’s a sample from page 1 of the search results:

Widespread coverage of the Prince Rupert doctor shortage and ER closures ends after March — even though many of the doctors left in June and July.

Perhaps the reason for this is because other communities were hit with their own continuing ER closures throughout the summer — we weren’t alone in terms of our ER shutting down multiple times. For urban communities, this may mean heading over another part of town or to a nearby city. But for remote communities a closed ER can mean big delays that come with life-threatening complications.

Another reason for no coverage could be a sigh of collective resignation — the widespread realization that nobody’s going to solve this problem for us, so why even make a public fuss?

Departing doctors and recurring closures of the ER are not the only health care challenges faced by Prince Rupert residents. Lack of specialists, longer than usual delays for needed procedures, weeks-long stays in distant communities for basic treatment (that should be available here), and the day-to-day challenges of receiving complex care absent a family physician are just some of the many other urgent issues faced by residents.

But what can we do?

Start by Listening to Each Other, Understanding the Challenge We Face

We must start by drawing even more attention to the matter. Yes, everyone in town knows that there is a crisis, we know that many of our doctors left town, and we hear countless stories from family, friends, and neighbours of “health care horror stories”.

We’ve also heard politicians who “care” about the issue and are either doing things to fix it or who are promising to do things if elected.

But most people do not know enough to truly understand the whole of the problem. That is why we need to talk, in a more productive way, to get to a better community-wide understanding of the problem.

And we need to hear from everyone, including:

  • Patients and their families who are facing immediate issues due to a lack of care
  • People who’ve experienced terrible situations and tragic results due to how care is managed in our city and region
  • Specialists, doctors, nurses, and administrators who are stressed by working in a system that’s under capacity and failing to deliver the care their community needs
  • Health care system leaders who are both knowledgeable of how the “whole system” is supposed to work, aware of failings at this level, and working on solutions
  • Union leaders and professional regulatory agencies that are responsible for staffing levels, working conditions, and standards of care
  • People from other parts of the region, province, and country who bring multiple perspectives — connections between places on what is working and not working, how to learn from each other
  • Elected officials who are ultimately responsible for making the system work

Listening to all these voices cannot be easy. For one thing, between all the points of view, they won’t ever all agree. And for another thing, the various people telling the various points of view are bound to annoy one another – pointing fingers, expressing frustration, speaking nonsense.

But there is no way out of this crisis without first listening more, without understanding more, and without drawing attention to over the problem, the complexity of the problem, and the various solutions available to solve the problem.

Beyond Listening – Put in Place Policies to Start Improvements Now

  1. End the “Home Hospital Rule” — end the practice of refusing care for residents of communities that either do not provide care, or that provide lower quality care
  2. Provide full reimbursement of travel expenses for medically necessary travel — if care is not provided where the patient lives, then at least bring the patient to the care
  3. Prioritize provision of family doctors for infants and young children (in communities with doctor shortages) — focus on early interventions (cognitive, medical, social, emotional, etc.)
  4. Grade and rank each electoral district by the availability of health care resources (including staffing levels), provision of services (including ER closures), and health care outcomes for the people of each district — make this information easily accessible and hold politicians to account for inequalities between districts

(I’ll write more about each of these points over the next several days…)