The Sunshine Coast Division of Family Practice, an umbrella group representing local doctors, wants action on long-term care from the new health minister.
In a letter to Adrian Dix, copied to Coast Reporter, doctors Jim Petzold, the lead physician of the Division’s residential care committee, Karen Forgie, the group’s chair, and Anthony Barale, the president of the Medical Staff Association, say elderly patients have been “languishing in acute care beds” at the hospital because of continued delays with a new long-term care facility.
The letter highlights many of the same issues that prompted a November 2016 letter to then Health Minister Terry Lake, signed by more than 50 Sunshine Coast doctors – overcrowding at Sechelt Hospital and a desperate need for more long-term care beds.
“The Sechelt Hospital operates at 130 per cent capacity, the highest occupancy rate of any hospital in the Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) Authority,” the letter says. “On average, 30 to 40 per cent of our hospital’s acute care beds are occupied by elderly patients awaiting placement in a long-term care facility.”
The letter also comes three years after VCH first issued a call for proposals for new long-term care beds on the Sunshine Coast, and nearly two years after an agreement with Trellis Seniors Services was announced that would see a new facility built to replace Shorncliffe and Totem Lodge, with a net increase of 25 beds.
The Trellis deal has met with some community opposition, and issues getting zoning approvals in Sechelt prompted the company to sign a deal with the Town of Gibsons to buy land there that was already properly zoned.
“Trellis has still not received the necessary approval from VCH to proceed with construction of the new facility,” the doctors write. “Meanwhile, elderly patients are languishing up to three months or longer in acute care hospital beds while awaiting placement. At any given time up to 90 per cent of our emergency room stretchers are occupied and 50 per cent of those by very sick admitted patients who cannot be transferred to an appropriate ward bed.”
Petzold told Coast Reporter that local doctors are frustrated that some four years after first raising concerns about the shortage of long-term care beds on the Coast, there’s been no definitive action.
“There’s been a change of government, and we’re writing the new minister because our situation is even more dire,” he said, adding that the impact on the ER is a serious concern because, unlike hospitals on the Lower Mainland, Sechelt Hospital has nowhere to divert incoming patients if the ER is at capacity.
The doctors’ letter ends with a clear call to action.
“Mr. Dix, we urge your ministry to intervene at this time and give direction to VCH to act now,” it says. “There is a signed contract with the Trellis Group to begin addressing our [long-term care] bed shortage which in turn will help address the severe overcrowding at Sechelt Hospital. That contract should be implemented now to ensure an immediate build. Time is of the essence.”
The full text of the Division of Family Practice letter is in our Letters section.
