Williams Lake Mayor Surinderpal Rathor is urging Minister of Health Josie Osborne to get to the bottom of a shortage of mental and physical health care in the city.
Rathor and Osborne met over dinner on Tuesday, July 22, during the minister’s tour of B.C.’s Interior region and discussed the mayor’s demands from the Ministry of Health.
“I am very happy and delighted with the meeting I had with the minister,” Rathor said in an interview with the Tribune. “I will be more delighted when she delivers.”
And deliver she will, Rathor said with confidence.
“There’s no reason not to believe her," he said, referencing Osborne’s history in municipal politics and his belief that it allows the minister to understand the lake city’s challenges.
The mayor said Osborne promised to work on his demands, which included more detox and treatment centres in the area to help address the drug crisis. His priorities for the minister also included addressing the health care shortage by increasing opportunities for and access to training, by streamlining the transfer of out-of-province credentials and by introducing more financial incentives to encourage healthcare professionals to work in rural B.C.
Rathor said he requested that his demands be addressed as soon as possible. Whether that’s tomorrow or down the road, he isn’t sure, but he trusts it will get done.
Osborne’s visit to B.C.’s Interior began in Kamloops and ended in Kamloops, with stops in Vernon, Cache Creek and 100 Mile House along the way. During her visit to Williams Lake, she toured the new Urgent and Primary Care Centre, the All Nations Healing House and the multi-million-dollar addition to the Cariboo Memorial Hospital, which is currently under construction.
"They’re really doing a phenomenal job,” Osborne said about the additions to the hospital. “It's just really good to see that that's the kind of state-of-the-art facility we can build...people in rural communities really deserve it.”
Mayor Rathor raised concerns about being able to staff the hospital’s new addition, and Osborne assured him that healthcare professionals have shown much interest in the potential to work in a new, upgraded hospital versus older hospitals elsewhere.
Among those interested, he said, are ‘our very own’ UBC students near graduation who won’t need further licensing and will be able to start working as soon as they can. Osborne also told the Tribune that a medical school will open in Surrey next year with a focus on family medicine.
“Ninety per cent of students who do medical school in B.C. stay in B.C.," she said, optimistic that this will help deliver and retain healthcare workers in the province.
The shortage of healthcare workers has led to repeated closures in hospitals across the Interior region, with the closure of Kelowna’s pediatric unit lasting eight weeks. Amid the pediatric unit closure, Interior Health announced its Chief Administrative Officer, Susan Brown, would be stepping down.
At the time, Kelowna-Mission MLA Gavin Dew, an outspoken critic of both Interior Health and Minister Osborne, said Brown's resignation is "an overdue step in the right direction."
Then on July 26, Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops announced possible changes to maternity care that would last the rest of the summer, a move that came a week after pregnant women in Prince George were told they would be diverted to Kamloops due to reduced obstetric services throughout August.
In April, Interior Health told the Tribune it was expanding access to withdrawal management services and that people in the Interior region would be able to call the Access Central Line by this summer. Black Press has reached out to the Ministry of Health to know if the service is now available outside of the Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) region. At this time, the Access Central website only names VCH.
With files from Gary Barnes and Monica Lamb-Yorski
Editor's note: This story has been updated from its original.
