By Cheryl Chan, The ProvinceAugust 28, 2011 6:02 PM
A new patient care tower in the most overcrowded hospital in the B.C. Interior is set to open next month — with no new acute-care beds. Keeping the top two floors at the $180-million state-of-the-art Polson Tower at Vernon Jubilee Hospital empty when the facility opens Sept. 25 doesn’t make sense to Vernon realtor Paul Hill, who is trying to gather support for a Labour Day rally he hopes will show the province how badly the community needs the beds. “We want to make a statement: A simple but direct request to the government to complete the two shelled-in floors at the Polson Tower and make it operational.” The new tower will include a new emergency room, new operating rooms, and a new maternity and pediatric ward, but no new acute-care beds, despite the hospital consistently operating at 10 to 30 per cent over capacity. Hill took on the cause after hearing about too many people whose surgeries were delayed due to overcrowding, including one friend who waited a year for knee-replacement surgery. While he was waiting, the problem spread, caused by pain and imbalance, said Hill. By the time he got the procedure, he needed other surgeries to treat complications that arose from not getting the care in time. “They are people who put their trust in the health care system,” he said. “It would have been a whole lot less expensive if he had the surgery earlier.”
It will cost $20 million to complete the two floors, which can hold 60 beds, and another $20 million annually to keep it running. Hill said he has been advised the money is there, but that the government is looking for public input to guide its health care spending. A previous event Hill organized on July 1 drew about 200 to 250 people. He hopes to draw up to 1,000 people to the Sept. 5 rally at the Polson Tower parking lot. An online petition (petitiononlinecanada.com/petition/vjh-purple-ribbon-campaign-petition/136) demanding more acute-care beds has collected almost 1,500 signatures as of Sunday. NDP Leader Adrian Dix said persistent overcrowding makes hospitals less safe, increases costs in the long run, and negatively impacts the ability of doctors and nurses to work. “What they are doing is rationing care,” he said. “It doesn’t take much to see not addressing the problem costs more than the price it takes to solve it.”
In an emailed statement, the health ministry said merely adding beds doesn’t address the underlying issue, which it identified as the clogging up of acute-care beds by patients waiting for residential care beds. It said Interior Health will have 46 new residential beds in place by 2013. It said it has also added 23 acute-care beds at the hospital over the last two years to ease the shortage.
2 comments:
The Province screwed up the Rally organizer's name; it's Peter, not Paul. Still, nice they wrote anything.
Perhaps the IHA should review it bloated Admin Staff and use the money by reducing same and apply the saving to the required acute bed requirements.
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