Editor:
Along with our MLA and many others on the outside, I have been asking for the rationale behind the June 1 surprise announcement by Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH). Trellis is not the responsible party. VCH, how did you decide this?
VCH is designated by BC Liberal government actions as their agent responsible for health care management decisions and inaction, within constraints including available resources. That is why they can claim they are doing a wonderful job while knowing nothing about what is being done.
Trellis is a willing partner in a de-facto privatization. They are a private company. They have access to investment funds, at current historically low costs. Their ethics are unknowable, except as implied in their actions elsewhere, as is the comparison to fee for service professionals like physicians in the U.S. whose patient care decisions are governed by private insurance companies.
There is presumably a public interest “business” case for the VCH decisions to discard Totem and Shorncliffe while providing a new, quasi-public but really private facility. Among the considerations central to that case should be the quantitative and qualitative care needs, recently, currently and projected over the next 20 years of increase, in the primarily oldest age population cohorts up here on the Sunshine Coast.
We are denied the facts on which those decisions are based as well as the logic that led to the conclusion that some 25 more beds will meet our needs. Perhaps the chair of VCH’s board knows those facts and other considerations leading to this organization’s decision; the chair’s letter in last week’s paper discloses none of them. So I ask again: What is the basis for these decisions implied in your announcement, VCH?
If we do not hear from VCH, perhaps the premier will direct them, the agency responsible to her government for the decisions, to share the case for them, in advance of her re-election campaign.
Henry Hightower, Sechelt
