Provincial Health Minister Adrian Dix says they are throwing everything at the issue of temporary Emergency Room closures at Cariboo Memorial Hospital.
Dix says Williams Lake is a very high priority.
“You can see that in the letter letter from dix I sent to the Mayor which summarizes all of the actions that the Ministry of Health and the Interior Health Authority are taking to address the situation in Williams Lake, not just now, but into the future. There is no community in British Columbia, there is no community in Canada, that is seeing these levels of incentives and supports.”
Dix says in addition to what they are doing provincially, a number of things are underway in Williams Lake that he describes as “exceptional.”
“Three new full time nurses starting in August in permanent lines, new time limited agency contracts to support Williams Lake and this is meant LPN’s and RN’s, but also an RN from Kelowna General Hospital in July and August, and another one who has provided shifts to support the CMH emergency room, onboarded to the GoHealth BC program, using the voluntary redeployment of nursing staff to cover vacant shifts, using the Emergency Health Provider Registry, working with the BC College of Nurses and Midwives to create a temporary emergency registration to provide ED stabilization and Williams Lake has access to that.
Dix says there are also new financial incentives.
“In extreme circumstances we’ve approved on a time-limited basis extraordinary exceptional pay to incentivize nurses to take shifts that are not filled on an urgent basis, plus Cariboo Memorial is eligible for signing bonuses for recruitment and retention incentives for nurses, including a signing bonus of up to 20 thousand for eligible nurses to fill regular positions, and the Provincial Rural Retention Incentives which provides $2,000 per quarter based on the number of productive hours worked.”
Dix says all of that is on top of provincial initiatives focused on recruitment and retention of health care professionals.
“From my perspective the most important things that we’re doing and what we have to do are recruitment and retention initiatives for nurses in general, and for doctors of course. Its only those permanent things that happen that make a huge difference in the long run.”
We asked Dix if he was confident that there will be fewer ER closures in Williams Lake moving forward, or if he thinks it will take more time.
“I think it’s both. We’ve really engaged in Williams Lake over a period of months reducing the potential diversion. Over the last number of days, we had a lot of concern, worked very hard in the last two or three weeks of July on this. We’ve had a good period now where there haven’t been any diversions and we want to keep building on this, but there is not a guarantee that there won’t be further diversions.”
Dix says one ER closure is too many however, and he says they are committed to avoiding them.
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