Adrian Dix in 2023 PHOTO BY DARREN STONE /TIMES COLONIST
Local Journalism Initiative Seth Forward
Adrian Dix says NDP government planning overhaul of how doctors are paid to staff emergency rooms at night
Health Minister Adrian Dix says he’s frustrated that efforts to fill 130 staff vacancies in the North Health region’s Prince Rupert area aren’t succeeding.
“We want the emergency room open, we’re going to do everything we can to work with everybody here to make sure it is, and that this situation, this uncertainty, is not long-lived,” he said Tuesday in Prince Rupert.
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“We have to address recruitment issues here. We have to address cultural issues here so that people are working together and we have to make sure that this emergency room is open to people 24/7,” he said.
The emergency room at the Prince Rupert hospital has been closed eight times since the beginning of March due to physician shortages in the community. Meanwhile, several more doctors have warned their patients that they are retiring or leaving the city of about 13,000 people this year.
The next nearest alternative hospital is two hours away by road in Terrace, on a highway that can be treacherous in winter.
Among those about to lose their family physician is the local NDP MLA, Jennifer Rice, who is the parliamentary secretary for rural health.
The Health Ministry will soon be updating the payment scheme for how emergency rooms are now staffed, according to Dix.
“We frequently pay people who work emergency rooms overnight through fee for service in some ways. Well, there may not be enough patients overnight to make that worthwhile. So we’re shifting to what are called alternative payment plans, but are really salary contracts where you’re paying people for the shift and not for the patients,” Dix said.
“We have historically had emergency rooms that have been staffed by family doctors in the region … and that contract in a number of communities is no longer working. We can’t pretend that we can go back to some time in the past, we have to create a permanent solution.”
Meanwhile, B.C. Emergency Health Services has brought in extra paramedic crews and ambulances to help soften the effect of the emergency room closures, which has led to ambulances being unavailable to respond to emergencies.
“We’ve had this overwhelming response of paramedics across the province wanting to come to Prince Rupert to help,” said Rice. “And so I couldn’t be more proud of the team, but it is very difficult for the team when they can’t respond as fast as they would like to.”
Among the crews volunteering for a stint in Prince Rupert are critical care and advanced care paramedics who are able to triage and stabilize patients before transporting them to the nearest appropriate facility, such Terrace.
Meanwhile renovations to Prince Rupert’s emergency room began on March 1 and should finish by May next year according to the Ministry of Health, which said the department will be expanded to “improve flow in a modern environment.
