Delta fuming over hospital ER closure
Council says it has not received answers from Fraser Health about its concerns
By RICK GOODE
Delta Mayor George Harvie and city council have sent out letters expressing “urgent concern” over the recent shut down of the Delta Hospital emergency room. On Feb. 22 and 23, the hospital shut down its emergency room overnight in what was called a “service interruption” due to staffing shortages. The interruption, announced at 5:30 p.m. the day of the shutdown, left over 100,000 Delta residents without immediate access to urgent care.
On Feb. 22 and 23, the hospital shut down its emergency room overnight in what was called a “service interruption” due to staffing shortages. The interruption, announced at 5:30 p.m. the day of the shutdown, left over 100,000 Delta residents without immediate access to urgent care.
The Ladner-based hospital holds “10 acute beds, 10 observation beds, three ambulance bays, two negative pressure rooms, two fast track chairs and a trauma room” according to its website, with the beds providing “24 hours, seven days a week service.”
The letters were sent to Premier David Eby, B.C. Minister of Health Josie Osborne and Dr. Lynn Stevenson, interim president and CEO of Fraser Health Authority. In these letters, council urgently requested “detailed information on what specific measures Fraser Health is implementing to prevent further closures.”
City council isn’t the only organization calling for immediate action to solve this problem.
Community Comment
The Friends of Ladner Village, a group of Delta residents who work together to advocate for less density in the city, called for city council to “institute an immediate moratorium on all Delta high rise developments” until the situation regarding health care in the city is under control.
“We see a connection between what’s happening in health care and the push from [the government] to increase density and build high rises,” said Bev Yaworski, a member of the group. “How do you want to add more and more people to our community, but they don’t have health care?”
She said that at this point, she wouldn’t use the Delta Hospital due to the “six or seven hour wait time.”
“I would have to be extremely sick and in a near death situation before I would go there these days,” Yaworwski said.
Council Frustrations
Coun. Dylan Kruger didn’t link the rising density in Delta to the closure, but rather Fraser Health itself.
“It’s just complete incompetence when it comes to staffing,” he said, “We have trained medical doctors living in Canada, with international credentials, who are driving taxis and Ubers because they can’t get their credentials to transfer to work in B.C facilities. This is about recruitment and staffing. The ER would have been closed for those two days whether Delta had 100,000 or 100 million people because they did not have the doctors to operate it.”
He also expressed his dissatisfaction with city council not being notified before the closures were announced.
“I found out on the news with everybody else three hours before the closures were to happen. So obviously very disappointed by the lack of notice, not just that Delta council got but that the community got, for these closures that obviously Fraser Health knew were going to be a possibility for a number of days leading up to the event,” he said.
As of Match 31, city council has not received a response from Fraser Health.
In a statement to The Voice, Fraser Health, wrote: “Physician schedules are dynamic and can change for a variety of reasons in real time. It is important to note our efforts to fill shifts, and prevent emergency department service interruptions, is almost always successful and Fraser Health’s average prevention rate is 99 per cent.”