The recent public forum conducted at the Schubert Centre, which was led by Dr. Hamish Hwang, presented physician’s concerns regarding the planned Vernon Jubilee Hospital expansion. I am writing to reiterate those concerns.
Expansion of Vernon Jubilee Hospital is great news for the patients as well as the hospital staff. As a physician working at VJH, I am looking forward to the day the wing opens — when we have access to the increased outpatient space and new operating rooms. However, the current proposed expansion is inadequate.
Vernon Jubilee Hospital currently has four operating rooms which cannot provide adequate facility for timely patient elective and emergency care. The current official number of in-hospital beds is 125. There are an additional 16 beds that are not funded and have been opened since last summer, raising the total count to 137. Even with these unfunded beds, the hospital remains over census almost daily and code purple (meaning the hospital is in gridlock and diversions are necessary) is a daily scenario at Vernon Jubilee Hospital. Between March 27 and April 16, code purple was called 15 times (15 days of gridlock).
Why is it that the new building that will be erected at VJH will not potentially improve the current situation? The presentation by Dr. Hwang explained many of the potential reasons. The bottom line is simple.
We need additional in-patient hospital beds and an increased number of functioning operating rooms to address the current patient demands let alone plan for the future. While more chronic care beds (non-acute beds) are required and will be made available by the initiatives undertaken by Interior Health Authority (IHA), these alone will not address the daily shortage of acute-care beds encountered. Currently no increase in inpatients beds has been guaranteed. Similarly, the current plan is to open only four operating rooms and one more limited outpatient operating room in the new tower. Physicians are asking for five operating rooms to be opened immediately and provision for further operating room expansion made.
When the Liberal government came into power in B.C., administrative structure of health care distribution in this province was changed.
Small health care regions were amalgamated to form large regional health authorities. In the Interior, multiple health regions were amalgamated under the new structure of IHA. IHA provides health care across a vast geographic area servicing 750,000 people. It manages 34 acute-care hospitals and triple that number of residential care facilities and public health care units.
When IHA region was created, an external consulting firm was hired (Sullivan Consulting) to conduct an operational review of health care service provision. This took place in 2003. As a result of that review, IHA developed a strategic plan to improve health care access across the health region. This included structural review of the facilities as well as functional management of the facilities and, in some cases, centralization or expansion of services.
A waiting list registry was developed and implemented to allow for improved tracking and management of patients waiting for surgery. Neurosurgical program expansion took place at Kelowna and Kamloops hospitals. At VJH, spinal surgery program was funded while at all major hospitals the rate of total joint replacement surgery doubled.
Vascular and thoracic surgery program was created at KGH and in the near future heart surgery will be done in Kelowna as well. These are great accomplishments.
At the same time, it became apparent that many hospitals required expansion of physical space, as well as services. A plan was put forward and carried out in a logical sequence to address these needs.
At Vernon Jubilee Hospital, physician input was sought and group meetings took place between the IHA, consulting architect firms, physicians and other health care workers to come up with a plan for hospital expansion.
This was done in response to structural review of the current physical plant.
A plan was put forth to build a new building which would include additional operating rooms, increased size of emergency room, new outpatient clinics and new paediatric/obstetric hospital ward.
However, the North Okanagan area continued to grow at an unprecedented rate. The planned expansion of the hospital did not account for the increasing volume of aging population.
While the strategic steps for the proposed hospital expansion were taken years ago and will bear fruit in the near future, VJH’s acute-care bed shortage may remain unresolved. IHA has an opportunity to respond to this challenge (as it has to many others since its inception) by increasing the number of acute-care beds and operating rooms as required today.
It can add an additional floor on top of the tower, to be built where the new inpatient hospital ward can be placed. It can open up acute-care beds in the old hospital wing.
Immediate opening of five operating rooms can be planned. But above all, it must acknowledge the current acute-care bed crisis and commit required resources to address it now.
I hope IHA intervenes quickly and incorporates the required changes before the new hospital wing is built. This would insure an immediate improvement of patients’ access to medical care in our community and ensure the future access as well.
It would be a great shame if the $81 million dollar VJH expansion took place only to have patients seen and admitted into hallways and scheduled surgical cases cancelled because of ongoing shortage of acute-care beds and OR space.
Jan B. Splawinski,
Ortho and spinal surgeon,
IHA Surgical Council member
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