Early pregnancy care options still available with OB-GYN departures on horizon at Royal Inland Hospital

“The combination has really created a lot of alarm among families in the community, for sure, about where they’re going to receive care and what that’s going to look like,” says Joanna Norman, the clinic lead at the Early Pregnancy Access to Care and Triage Clinic, formerly known as the First Steps Early Pregnancy Triage Clinic.

“Because our clinic is focused on early pregnancy care, where we’re going to see the loss is in the ability to attach people to high-risk care providers. That is going to be really challenging. Now we’re going to need to look to referral sites beyond Kamloops much more often than we’ve had to before,” she explains. “I mean there are always certain circumstances when we refer down to Vancouver, but now there’s going to be a big uptick in that, for sure.”

Seven physicians penned the letter to community health care providers, letting them know they had resigned from in-hospital work under Interior Health. IH had accepted their resignations and told them they would also need to resign their gynecology surgical privileges at that site.

Norman points out obstetrics and gynecology doesn’t just care for expectant families — it includes women in general.

“What’s really important to remember is that our obstetrician group doesn’t just provide care during child birth. They provide care through the spectrum of a lifetime, from adolescence to menopause. I mean, if you’re born with a uterus, at some point you’re going to need an obstetrician-gynecologist,” she explains. “And so it’s a huge loss, huge loss to the community.”

In the meantime, that essential care is still available at RIH. Interior Health CEO Sylvia Weir told CFJC on this week that if physician concerns are addressed, there is hope they might want to come back.

“The conversations we’ve had with them have been around workload pressure,” said Weir, “so, as I say, there are issues that they deal with the province over around compensation. But scheduling and recruitment are things that we can help with and are very happy to do that.”

According to Norman, who works in the women’s pre- and post-natal care spectrum as a midwife, the obstetrics workload issues have been boiling over for years.

“You need incentives to bring people here. You need enough funding to bring people here, you need enough support in place to keep the people and retain the people you have for sustainability,” notes Norman. “If you don’t have that, you start losing people and safety becomes an issue. That’s a work environment that is very challenging to work in.”

As for expectant families wondering what this means for them, Norman reiterates that the Early Pregnancy Access to Care and Triage Clinic is still open for people up to 30 weeks gestation.

“[You] don’t need a doctor’s referral. You can phone, you can text, you can come to this clinic. You can get those early essential screening tests, ultrasounds, referrals and we will help you navigate the uncertainty of this changing maternity care system locally to the best of our ability,” she adds.

For now at Royal Inland Hospital, doctors who tendered their resignation will stay on to care for their patients until a transition plan is ironed out.

CFJC has contacted the physicians who authored the letter and will have more on this developing story when we hear back.

Meantime, the MLA for Kamloops Centre, Peter Milobar, says after hearing of the service withdrawal, expectant families are already contacting his office to express worry about their medical care.

“There’s a lot of women who need access to those types of surgical intervention procedures for their own health,” Milobar told CFJC Today. “We need to make sure that Interior Health and the Ministry of Health have a very clear plan articulated with the community to allay those fears.”

The move to withdraw surgical services from RIH comes after years of conversations between the specialists, Interior Health and the province. Milobar says those conversations have largely been one-sided and it’s now up to the province to provide direction.

“I’m focused right now on trying to make sure the minister of health — who ultimately controls the dollars and who ultimately can give direction to Interior Health on how to rectify some of these systemic issues we see going on — steps up to the plate and actually provides not just comment but a clear path forward,” he said.

by CFJC Today

Early pregnancy care options still available with OB-GYN departures on horizon at Royal Inland Hospital

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