Overnight ER closures in Williams Lake draw attention to hospital operations, ongoing recruitment needs in Cariboo

Speaking to CFJC Today on Thursday (July 11), both the chair of the hospital district and the mayor of Williams Lake explained they’re not interested in finger pointing and are instead trying to focus on working with the health authority for solutions.

“I don’t like blaming anybody. I wanted to get to the bottom of the root (problem),” says Williams Lake Mayor Surinderpal Rathor. “Once we get to the issue… I’m not only complaining, I’m not a complainer or a whiner. I’m a solutions finder and if there’s any way, shape or form the city can help once we’ve found the root cause, let’s fix it, and we will be on board to address that.”

The municipality’s decision to ask Interior Health to review operations was made at a recent Williams Lake council meeting Tuesday evening (July 9). Less than an hour before the meeting began, the community was notified that, for a fifth time in the span of one week, the Cariboo Memorial Hospital ER would be temporarily closed overnight.

“I don’t want to waste time because the lives of the hundreds and the thousands and thousands of people are at stake, and I can’t take that risk,” stressed Rathor. “As you know, human lives are priceless. We can’t let it go.”

According to the chair of the Cariboo Chilcotin Regional Hospital District, Al Richmond, the internal review process has been used previously in Clearwater and resulted in some improvement with recruiting healthcare providers to that hospital.

“IH has indicated that they’re appreciative of the concerns of the City of Williams Lake and the Hospital District, and the model used in Clearwater… is a collaborative model to try and bring it back and attract healthcare professionals to our communities,” he explains. “They’re committed to doing that in Williams Lake, as well.”

Richmond says the hospital district is spending around $300,000 annually on recruitment and retention. He references that there are contracted teams even finding houses to keep on retainer for healthcare professionals to live in when they come to the Cariboo.

“Those are all things that we never did 10 years ago, but we’re doing them now. We’re going to spend as much in the next five years on recruitment and retention and supporting our healthcare professionals as we did in the previous 10,” he adds.

It’s not clear exactly how long a review process would take, but the immediate goal is to keep emergency services open consistently this summer.

“Our population booms in the summer. We normally have a population — I’ll just talk about the South Cariboo for one — of 15,000 and we balloon to more than 30,000 people who come to enjoy the lakes and facilities here,” explains Richmond. “It’s important that these facilities are open. I think IH has heard and is trying to do that.”

When asked about the internal review request, the vice-president of clinical operations for IH North, Diane Shendruk, provided the following statement:

“Interior Health appreciates the City of Williams Lake’s interest to support stabilizing service levels and we are deeply committed to working together to address these challenges.

While we have not received the request from the city for a review at this time, we are aware of this request and will follow-up when we receive it.

I can say that, while each community has unique challenges and circumstances, we appreciate the importance of working with the community of Williams Lake to recruit staff and physicians.

Working together, we can better identify solutions to reach the common goal of reliable health services for the community.

As this ongoing work happens, Interior Health’s top priority is to do everything possible to limit further service interruptions in the community.”

by Dylana Kneeshaw

Overnight ER closures in Williams Lake draw attention to hospital operations, ongoing recruitment needs in Cariboo

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