Plans to free up space for respiratory patients by canceling surgeries are in place at British Columbia hospitals, Health Minister Adrian Dix says, as parents worry about long emergency room waits with sick children.
But the province has not yet reached the point of ceasing operations, Dix said Thursday, as he faced opposition calls for his resignation.
Parents and the opposition have decried the long waits in British Columbia’s emergency rooms for children suffering from serious respiratory symptoms.
“I’ve been excited about our health care system my whole life, but now I see it slowly falling apart and it scares and worries me,” said Rachel Thexton, who waited hours for medical attention after each of her three children became ill during the last two weeks.
“In my lifetime, I have never seen this level of clear, accessible resources for anyone, child or adult, to get health care when they need it in an emergency,” she said in an interview.
The Burnaby mother said she faced hurdles in caring for each of her children, including turning down her overworked family doctor and urgent care centers and enduring long waits at emergency rooms in Vancouver and Burnaby.
Texton said her children were eventually seen by doctors, who diagnosed one with pneumonia and the others with severe sinus and ear infections.
She said she’s lucky to have a family doctor, but she often can’t make an appointment and emergency care is unavailable.
“Ambulance is never my first choice. This is my last resort,” Thexton said.
“I don’t want to take my child or myself there to overload the system if it’s not absolutely necessary.”
Adrian Dix, British Columbia’s health minister, says the province has not yet reached the point of canceling operations. (Ben Nelms/CBC)
The province is dealing with a difficult disease season and steps will be taken to provide space for respiratory emergencies, Dix said.
He said postponing non-emergency surgeries is one way to make room in hospitals for patients, especially children, who are battling flu and other respiratory illnesses, including COVID-19.
“We have other steps that we don’t want to take, but they would be, for example, delaying non-emergency surgery and then quickly catching up on those steps,” Dix told reporters at the legislature.
“This step is available to us. We haven’t done it yet. We knew it was going to be a tough season and it has been.”
British Columbia Children’s Hospital in Vancouver says it is diverting less serious patients from its emergency department to a nearby area because of the surge in people with respiratory illnesses.
Christy Hay, the hospital’s executive director of clinical operations, says the department is seeing mostly viral illnesses, including COVID-19 and increasing cases of influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.
She says in an email that the increase in RSV and influenza was expected based on trends in other parts of Canada and around the world.
Dix said the current respiratory disease situation in British Columbia is worrying for parents and people waiting for surgery.
“You don’t want to delay any operations unless you have to,” he said.
“It’s terrible if your child or you have a delayed operation, for whatever reason.”
B.C. Liberal Leader Kevin Falcon said he heard “horror stories” every day from parents waiting long hours in emergency rooms with their children.
“Why could one flu season cause such a huge crisis in our health care system?” he told a news conference.
“(The government) is not going to get better results unless it has the courage to make big changes to the system.”
Liberals used question period in the legislature to repeat calls for Dix to quit.
Add Comment