Council questions Interior Health on local hospital

The Town of Osoyoos has been assured that South Okanagan General Hospital (SOGH) is providing the best care possible.

This assurance was made last week by Interior Health (IH) administrators Carl Meadows and Susan Brown.

Meadows began by saying that SOGH has 18 publicly funded beds.

The administrator pointed out that staff and physicians provide excellent care to their patients. In fact, IH recently received a letter from a family (from the east coast) who said they received “outstanding” care.

Meadows then listed a number of improvements that the hospital has made or is undergoing. These include renovations to its emergency/triage and reception area (still in the planning stage), increased security and the formation of a new patient advisory council. He also stated that SOGH is the first hospital in North America to integrate Pharmanet/Meditech in the emergency department. Meadows said this means you can pull up a client’s prescriptions without having to look at paper documents.

Meadows also mentioned the hospital’s tele-mental health system where video conferencing is used to link clients with health professionals for assessments.

Meadows said the hospital now has a capacity plan to deal with congestion in terms of beds.

“We have moved to more single patient rooms for infection control and staff safety,” he pointed out.

He also noted the hospital has three extra rooms to address periods of congestion.

Meadows said Interior Health is continuing to invest in SOGH with new equipment such as ceiling lifts, increased security and the formation of a new patient advisory council.

Meadows answered a question about how the renovations will impact staff’s ability to do their jobs in triage. He noted they have a transition plan during construction.

The administrator said other new equipment at SOGH includes a chest compressor (donated by the local health care auxiliary); a new touch screen computer for the emergency department; a bariatric commode/shower chair (donated by auxiliary); two IV pumps and one vital sign machine; cardiac arrest simulation equipment for training purposes; and bulk oxygen upgrade.

“This is just demonstrating that we’re continuing to invest in the hospital,” Meadows said.

He noted the hospital’s occupancy rate is below 90 per cent.

“Mainly because we’ve really been able to get the right clients into the right service at the right time.”

Meadows said SOGH actually has a very low admission rate but a very high volume of non-acute patients. For example, statistics show that seven out of 10 people walking into the Oliver hospital could have been seen by a doctor in a walk-in clinic (instead of taking up emergency time).

“It’s no blaming of anybody,” he stated.

Meadows said urgent care would be someone who has COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and has trouble breathing.   

Non-urgent care would be someone who fell and suffered a fracture, he said.

In 2017/18, there were 16,717 unscheduled visits to SOGH, compared to 17,336 in 2016/17. Emergent care visits in 2017/18 totaled 978, compared to 807 last year. Urgent care visits totaled 4,331 in 2017/18, compared to 3,956 in 2016/17. And non-urgent care visits – 11,104 compared to 12,207.

Meadows noted that Penticton Regional Hospital has 36,000 visits a year while SOGH has 18,000.

Brown said home is the best place to recover from illness and injury when patients are not acutely ill.

“We really want people in the hospital who need to be in the hospital, but people often recover better at home. They do better aging in place, and often palliative care is provided better at home.”

Brown said recuperating at home is better because people are more motivated to get up and move around.

Mayor Sue McKortoff asked if the services provided by home care are adequate. She said they hear stories from people who said nobody came to visit them or didn’t stay long enough to do anything.

Brown said there has been a change in home care services over the past 20 years, noting the number of services have been reduced.

“Our home support services are often very short for some people . . . and we know that we have a shortage of home support workers.”

Brown said they are working hard with the college and recruiting department to improve their attraction and retention of these workers.

McKortoff mentioned the new “community paramedic” program in Osoyoos, which she deems very positive.

Brown agreed, saying the program just started here and has seen positive results in other communities, such as Princeton and Keremeos.

Brown said Interior Health wants to identify what the compelling story is in Osoyoos and Oliver that will attract doctors and nurses to practice here. She noted they really need a recruitment plan that doesn’t just react when there is a shortage of physicians in the South Okanagan.

“The reality is we really need to be working at it all the time.”

Brown said they look for assistance from communities to house locums when they come here. One of the big challenges is to secure the accommodations that are needed for these doctors, she pointed out.

During question period, Councillor CJ Rhodes asked if there are any hospital staff cuts being planned, particularly in the nursing department.

Brown said they are looking to grow their nursing resources and are planning for that.

Meadows said they had a nursing review committee look at SOGH, noting the site received an additional $191,000 to focus on nursing resources.

He noted one of the challenges put forward for fixing was the previous nursing ratio of one nurse per nine patients (at night), a figure that was reduced to 1:6 on both days and nights. He noted they never really had a solid care aide roster, so the money used to lower the nursing ratio came at the expense of care aides. However, they are not laying anybody off, he stated, adding the best fit for care aides is residential and in the community where they are desperately needed.

McKortoff said her neighbour is a registered nurse who just started working at SOGH.

Meadows said the good news is they now have a more stable nursing line, something they never had before.

One question that was asked by an Oliver town councillor was the status of the alternate payment plan for doctors at SOGH.

(This involves paying physicians fair compensation for emergency room coverage.)

Dr. Nick Balfour, executive medical director of IH Central, told the Oliver Chronicle that the Ministry of Health has not approved a change to the compensation model under the Alternate Payment Plan service contract. “The current fee-for-service model is consistent with similar sized hospitals in rural settings across the province, so we are working to address challenges in Oliver and determining if there are solutions within the current compensation framework, as well as other options within the community.”

Balfour said IH is committed to working with physicians to seek a long-term solution for sustainable physician staffing of the emergency department at SOGH.

LYONEL DOHERTY

Special to the Times