Last week Dr. Peter Entwistle resigned as chief of staff at South Okanagan General Hospital (SOGH) and subsequently announced he will run in the upcoming provincial election as an independent candidate.
Healthcare was already shaping up to be the major issue in this election, but Entwistle’s candidacy guarantees it will be a key focus from now to Election Day on May 9.
Added to this, Brenda Dorosz, who led the fight to save Osoyoos Secondary School last year, has now turned her attention along with others to a petition drawing attention to the failings of local healthcare.
The non-partisan, non-profit organization BC Health Coalition, is also focusing on Boundary-Similkameen as an important swing riding where they want to ensure that voters are motivated by healthcare issues.
Their forum in Oliver on Saturday was poorly attended, not for lack of interest, but for inadequate promotion. As this paper goes to press on Tuesday, it’s not yet known what the turnout would be at a similar meeting in Osoyoos Tuesday night.
Added to all of this, the recent case of Osoyoos resident Lee Horn, who waited nearly three years in excruciating pain for a hip replacement, is drawing attention to B.C.’s abysmal record on surgical wait times.
For hip replacements, B.C. has wait times worse than all other provinces in Canada, with the exception of Nova Scotia.
The record for other critical surgeries such as knee replacements is just as bad in this province.
Thankfully, Horn finally got his operation last week. Whether the timing is coincidental or whether there was deliberate action to get rid of this as an election issue, we don’t know. We’re happy Horn was finally taken care of, but there are many others like him still waiting.
There is debate about the significance of bed reductions at SOGH.
Entwistle maintains that the reduction in beds from 24 to 18 will harm patient care.
MLA Linda Larson and Interior Health insist that there is no reduction – only 18 beds have been funded all along and the hospital is simply “doing some reconfiguration,” to use Larson’s words, of extra unfunded beds that were rarely used.
Whatever the truth – and it may lie between these two positions – there can be no denying that emergency services at SOGH are under serious pressure. With many local residents denied a family doctor and with no local walk-in clinics, patients all too often are coming to emergency for minor medical problems that could be dealt with by a nurse practitioner.
At a meeting last week with the Anarchist Mountain community (listen to the audio on
OsoyoosTimes.com) Larson seemed a little too quick to claim her government is doing all it can to address this province’s healthcare problems.
But other Canadian provinces, including Newfoundland and Labrador with the highest median age in the country, have better outcomes than B.C. according to a number of key benchmarks.
British Columbians are looking for leadership on healthcare – not excuses. This means looking at best practices elsewhere and adopting what works.
Independent candidates are rarely elected, and when they are, they find that the rules of the Legislature severely limit their voices.
But many local residents dissatisfied with the healthcare positions of the two main parties may choose to vote for Entwistle as a protest.
If his entry into the election race forces the other parties to take a more serious look at B.C.’s healthcare problems, his decision to run will be all worthwhile.
