A helicopter company that transports a doctor from Port McNeil to a remote First Nations community suspended service this month because of an unpaid $75,000 bill.
A helicopter company that transports a doctor from Port McNeil to a remote First Nations community suspended service this month because of an unpaid $75,000 bill.
Peter Barratt, 75, co-owner of West Coast Helicopters, began transporting doctors to the First Nations communities of Kingcome Inlet, Kyuquot and Wuikinuxv about 44 years ago. When payments for the flights to Rivers Inlet’s Wuikinuxv Nation dried up in February, Barratt called the doctor.
“I said, ‘I don’t know how much longer we can go on with this,'” Barratt said, recalling the conversation with Dr. Prean Armogam.
Armogam, which fully supports the helicopter company, said it has two babies – including one that has been in hospital for months – with young mothers in the Wuikinuxv Nation who need manual care. There is family and community support, of course, but there are no nurses in the community, he said.
He was supposed to fly on July 7th. “I should have physically seen this baby and I didn’t last week,” said Armogam, who has provided health care to the people of the Wuikinuxv Nation for 16 years.
Island Health has historically paid for the flights of doctors to the three communities, but more recently the province has paid for those to Kyuquot, with the First Nations Health Authority paying for Kingcome Inlet and Wuikinuxv.
Kingcome Inlet and Kyuquot are in Island Health’s service area. Wuikinuxv is within the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, but residents have access to medical care on Vancouver Island.
Since Barratt referred the issue to Armogam, there has been much correspondence with the First Nations Health Authority and others, but no resolution.
“I blame the First Nations Health Authority, I blame the Vancouver Island Health Authority and the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority because none of the three own this orphaned First Nations community,” Armogam said. “None of these three organizations could figure out how to actually get the service up and running.”
Island Health said Friday that the Wuikinuxv Nation is not in its service area. “Island Health is not the primary organization coordinating this particular doctor’s service,” the health authority said. “Vancouver Coastal and the FNHA will need some time to look at this.”
On Saturday, the First Nations health authority said it would review the situation on Monday when the appropriate people are available.
Barratt said he’s not cutting service because his team doesn’t want to fly there, “we’re cutting it because we can’t afford to fly there.”
“These things are not cheap to run,” he said. “I’m telling you, our profit margins are about two percent, maybe.”
He said one doctor flew from Port Alice to Kyuquot, two doctors flew from Alert Bay to Kingcome Inlet and Armogham flew from Port McNeill to Wickinuxv. “The three of them owe us $75,000.”
Barratt said $49,000 of that has been overdue for months. “I don’t know who’s paying… it sounds like they’re fighting each other. Sounds like they are changing the billing. We don’t know what’s going on.”
Dr Granger Avery, 76, a retired doctor and former president of the British Medical Association, arrived in Port McNeill in 1974.
“It became very apparent to me after two or three years that people were coming in from the more remote communities with things that they should have reached out to much earlier,” Avery said Saturday. Considering the difficulty of travel from these areas, he quickly decided that he must go to them.
He approached the Canadian Indigenous Service, which agreed to pay for the flights.
Avery said the hands-on care that doctors provide in remote communities is vital to both patients and doctors — seeing a patient’s pallor, feeling a patient’s weak pulse or hands, seeing the way they speak or to see them in their home environment.
“There are signs that an experienced GP will notice and think about and sometimes it’s important and sometimes it’s nothing – but unless you’re there you can’t do that,” he said.
Tribal Manager Paul Wiley said the chief and the council plan to talk about the ongoing struggles to get adequate medical care in the community.
ceharnett@timescolonist.com
Add Comment