Vernon Jubilee 'worst physical plant within IHA'

http://www.dailycourier.ca/article_313.php By Wayne EmdeTuesday, June 27, 2006
“We’re here to tweak your ears a little bit, to bring you up to speed,” said Dr. Chris Cunningham, Vernon Jubilee Hospital medical staff president, as he opened a presentation to Vernon city council on yesterday. His presentation focused on the projected population growth in Vernon, the physical facility at VJH, physician resources, and the need for political help.He outlined the current state of affairs at VJH, which has 31,000 Emergency Room visits a year, 5,500 to 6,000 surgeries and 60,000 radiological tests in what Murray Ramsden, the CEO of the Interior Health Authority, calls the “worst physical plant within IHA.”Dr. Cunningham pointed out that planning for the future is inadequate and that the IHA consultants have been told to keep inpatient beds at the same number in spite of population growth projections.“There are 34 fewer acute care beds and 17 fewer extended care beds now at VJH than there were in 2002,” he said, adding that they run between 120 and 140 per cent overcapacity.Dr. Peter King, VJH chief of emergency medicine said that a short term renovation to the emergency room, designed to alleviate gross overcrowding is months behind schedule. Currently the four operating rooms are used five days a week, but the lack of acute care beds has meant that non-surgical patients have been put into surgical beds, resulting in the postponement or cancellation of surgeries. “We already have unmet needs in orthopedics, for example, and patients are sent to Vancouver for surgery.” King described the emergency department as a piece of junk and that “it is embarrassing to treat patients there.”IHA planning consultants have also proposed no increase in the number of operating rooms for the proposed expansion of VJH. But the doctors say that eight are required to meet the demand. The proposed new building, built on the same grounds as VJH, will include an emergency ward, intensive care unit, imaging and outpatient beds.In a response to a question from Patrick Nicol, Dr. Cunningham said that a population based, age adjusted formula used to determine the number of beds in a hospital needs to be changed. Another problem facing VGH is the number of patients from outside Vernon who are treated at VGH. “Only 57 per cent of our surgery patients are from Vernon. When the patients go to other places, the funding stays in their home districts,” said Cunningham.Addressing a parallel problem, Dr. Ed Hardy, the VJH chair of recruitment said that the IHA doesn’t get involved in attracting family doctors because they don’t use the hospitals. However, to attract an orthopedic surgeon, for example, the IHA must be able to guarantee operating room time. It would be like trying to recruit Mario Andretti to your racing team and then telling him that he might get a car in two years, said Hardy.VJH currently needs another urologist, but the IHA has to approve the hiring. “We’re also competing with hospitals in Alberta,” said Hardy, “and they are upgrading their facilities while our physical plant needs work and we have patients in halls.”Dr. Mike Concannon, the VJH chief-elect of emergency medicine said that the facility is “too old, too decrepit and too small.” “The issue is we need not just new, but bigger. What we have now is inadequate for 2006. It won’t help if we make the emergency ward bigger without adding beds in the rest of the hospital.”Outside council chambers, Dr. Cunningham said that doctors had spent months and years dealing with the problems and that they need support from council after trying every internal avenue. “We’re not looking for answers today, but we want to initiate the process.” he said. “We need help to work through the political channels.”