B.C. doctor contract won’t help Surrey Memorial: Dix
Posted June 2, 2023 4:30 pm.
Last Updated June 2, 2023 4:31 pm.
With seemingly no quick fix to the “crisis” situation at Surrey Memorial and other hospitals in Fraser Health, some doctors claim the lack of a new contract for in-house doctors is the central issue.
Patient complaints as well as open letters from doctors and women’s health staff have described wait times at Surrey Memorial Hospital (SMH) as being as long as 72 hours for patients to be transferred to a different ward. Some physicians suggest the central issue is the lack of a new contract with house doctors, or “hospitalists” as they’re known.
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Dr. Roopjeet Kahlon, President of the Medical Staff Association at SMH, says she thinks the public deserves transparency on what someone can expect when they walk into the hospital’s emergency room.
“You walk in through the emergency department as a patient [and] you are seen by the emergency room physician. They see the patients, they try to understand whether they need to be admitted, if they have decided the patient needs admission then they contact an admitting service… that’s our hospitalist colleagues,” she said.
Hospitalists say the existing contract terms hurt the ability to attract and retain doctors.
B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix says there’s more to the issue, suggesting there’s more at play than sorting out a new deal.
“It’s an extremely important issue, but far from the only issue if you have hundreds more people in our healthcare system,” said Dix, who notes the healthcare system had a census of 10,260 beds in January.
Instead, he points to bringing in more doctors as the best solution to move forward.
“We have to recruit more, we have to ensure that the very significant increase we’re seeing in family doctors in B.C., and extraordinary success of the Doctors of BC and ourselves working together is able to support acute care hospitals.”
Although Dix says a new hospitalist contract certainly isn’t the only solution to this ongoing crisis, he notes, “It would be a good part.”
“We’ve got to work on all of it,” he added.
Dix was asked about the prospect of leadership change at Fraser Health but responded with a detailed defence of the health authority’s chief executive Dr. Victoria Lee.
Throughout this situation at SMH, Fraser Health has been adamant the situation is not a crisis, a sentiment Dix echoed in mid-May.
-With files from Sonia Aslam
