The doctors are in ( just not quite everywhere)

While folks waiting in the lobby of the Prince Rupert Regional Hospital may find it hard to believe, the province is of the opinion that they are turning a corner in the ongoing doctor's shortage across the province.

The BC Health Ministry home page is trumpeting the success of it's Doctors for BC program, with 72 family physicians having been hired to work in communities identified as being in need of their services, a success rate that the province says puts it past the 75 per cent completion rate of their initiative. When the program reaches it's goal of 100 percent, some 114,000 British Columbians will once again have the services of a family doctor.

While that's certainly good news for those communities that have been suffering from the shortages of a family doctor, the situation in Prince Rupert doesn't seem to have been alleviated to any great degree.

Should you pop into the hospital at any time during regular hours of 9-5 you will still find a large number of Rupertities sitting in the waiting area, hoping that they can quickly find access to an emergency room doctor, having no recourse but to use emergency as their family clinic due to the much documented departures and shortages currently in the city.

It certainly isn't a perfect situation and it hopefully will be one of the key items for debate in the upcoming provincial election campaign, if the Liberals in particular and politicians in general are lucky, that remaining 25 percent to come from the physicians for BC program will feature one or two who will be choosing Rupert as their destination.

If not, those quotes of success while true for other locations in the province, may ring just a little hollow on the North coast

Is there a doctor in the house, or at least in town?

It perhaps is the most declarative statement yet, that the ongoing doctor's shortage in Prince Rupert is starting to show the large cracks in health care in the city.

A page three advertisement in Friday's Daily News, asking for consideration by any of the city's remaining doctors to take on a healthy elderly couple as patients.

The unusual request in the pages of the paper, underline the growing sense of frustration for city residents, many who now must call the Prince Rupert Regional Hospital Emergency ward as their medical office of record, this after a number of departures on the local medical scene.

The already overburdened emergency department probably doesn't need the workload, but when you're sick you have to go someplace; and with fewer and fewer doctors available locally and those that remain not taking new patients, there really are few options left for locals.

Back in September there was much made of an announcement from the province that some form of relief was soon to be on the way, but as we head into February it would seem that we aren't any closer to a resolution to the problem than we were then.

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The ongoing shortage situation which has yet to be fully addressed by Northern Health officials, never seemed to fully resonate with the last council and has yet to become a major concern for Prince Rupert city council, leaving residents to take matters into their own hands, hence the advertisement in Friday's paper.

Council received a briefing in January that there might be some hope on the horizon, but so far the situation seems to be getting much worse instead of better with the closure of the Green Clinic.

We doubt that Northern Health in Prince George has home delivery of the Daily News, so perhaps council could forward a few copies to them and maybe spend a few dollars and send some copies to the Minister of Health and the Premier for their perusal.

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The plea for help makes for a powerful testament if you will, that there is a serious situation that needs to be resolved quickly.

Northern Health seeks out solutions to health care concerns in Prince Rupert

The search may be over for a third physician at the Casey clinic in Prince Rupert, but with the shifting of Dr. Beverly-Ann Eysele to the downtown clinic, the future of the Greene Clinic on McBride Street suddenly seems even more uncertain now.

With her departure at the end of July, there will only be one available doctor remaining at the Greene Clinic. Dr. Greeff, who Northern Health suggest is not quite interested in running in the same fashion as it has for the last few years.

Aware that there is a need for greater support for the local community of Doctor’s, Northern Health is seeking out ways to alleviate the current crunch when it comes to seeking out a physician locally.

For the short term it would appear that Prince Rupert Regional Hospital will continue to shoulder the burden of personal health care requirements, as the Emergency department becomes the default office of necessity for those that can’t find room in the remaining practices in the city.

The Daily News had details on the latest struggles of health care in the city in Wednesday’s paper.

Loss of another doctor prompts concern for clinic
BY CARLA WINTERSGILL
The Daily News
Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Page five

The future of Prince Rupert's Greene Clinic is uncertain following the departure of another physician.

Dr. Beverly-Ann Eysele has announced that she will be leaving the Greene Clinic at the end of July and moving to the Casey Clinic. Her patients have the option of stopping into the Greene clinic to sign a request to have their charts transferred to her new clinic.

"The future of Greene Clinic is really uncertain at this point," said Andrew McLetchie, health service administrator for Northern Health.

Eyesele's departure leaves Dr. Greeff as the only remaining physician at Greene.

"I think in terms of the Greene Clinic, it's not something Dr. Greeff is interested in running as a complete clinic," said McLetchie. "At this point, Northern health is looking at how we can support all the physicians in the community to ensure that they can practice and we don't have gaps in their service delivery."

Northern Health has focused its energy on recruiting new physicians to the area.

"A lot of the action is things Northern Health can do around supporting recruitment," said McLetchie.

"We talked a bit about the need to promote Prince Rupert as a good place to live and a place that has benefits as a medical community. We're ensuring that we're working to recruit physicians to this community and to keep the ones that we have."

The shortage of family physicians is being felt by the community and has increased the burden on the hospital emergency room.

"Unfortunately, it's one of those things that we would like to have as many people as possible to have family physicians. There's just not the room in most of the practices in the community to accommodate any more people, so the emergency department accommodates them because that's the basic place where people can go to access service," said McLetchie.

"The likelihood of actually being able to get into a practice is very low. We're looking at ways of how we can make the emergency department better able to function with the flow of people coming through it."

Doctor, Doctor give us the news, we’ve got a bad case of needing you….

"We're short and that means a considerable amount of folks are using the emergency room as a clinic, which is not necessarily appropriate, but hey, what other options are there at this point "-- Tony Briglio, North West Regional Hospital District chair, outlining the measures that some Prince Rupert residents are taking in seeking out health care.

Prince Rupert’s doctor shortage has apparently gone far beyond the tipping point for many local residents as reports of two and sometime three week waits to see a local doctor are starting to wear on locals.

With most existing practices not accepting new patients at the moment, the crush will now come at the doors of the emergency ward of Prince Rupert Regional Hospital, which will be left to deal with the fallout of a decline in the number of practicing physicians in the city.

It’s an issue which is particularly troublesome for those patients that once had a regular physician and need regular appointments due to medication or long term health concerns, while local offices continue to seek out new doctors for local clinics the task has proven to be more than a little frustrating.

While Northern Health is reportedly busy trying to approach possible replacements, the competition is tough across the province and the country for that matter for would be local physicians.

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That competition, combined with a large number of doctors who prefer to specialize as opposed to becoming GP’s and you have the makings of major problem that the province needs to adequately address and quickly.

As the local message board hackingthemainframe discovered last week, the situation has become a little more worrisome locally, as the Green Clinic recently advised patients that they are having problems taking care of all current files in their office. Rumours persist that the clinic is set to close at the end of July, if so that would be a move that will leave a large number of local residents scrambling for a new place to have those files kept on hand and their health concerns taken care of.

The Daily News featured a front page story in Monday’s paper which highlights the health care concerns, which seems to rapidly be approaching a local crisis situation.

PATIENTS SCRAMBLE FOR CARE AS DOCTOR SHORTAGE LOOMS

Wait time for doctor visit prompting some to seek appointment at hospital instead
BY CARLA WINTERSGILL
The Daily News
Monday, June 23, 2008

Pages one and five

The message to patients outside the Green Clinic sums up Prince Rupert's problem concisely.
"Unfortunately," the sign reads, "We have come to realize that taking care of everybody is beyond our reach."

The Green Clinic's long-time doctor, Harris Coburn, is ill himself and has been forced to leave his practice, leaving the clinic short of help.

"At the time being, we're having some issues," said Antonio Briglio, city councilor. "As most of Prince Rupert knows, our beloved Dr. Coburn is ill. He's chosen not to go back to the clinic and he's left it with the doctors there. They have been doing their best but I believe a couple of them left town."

The Daily News has received several calls from frustrated residents who are unable to get immediate medical attention at various practices.

This is not a problem reserved exclusively to the Green Clinic, but it is troublesome for those who depend on regular doctor's appointments to regulate medication. The wait time for an appointment at the Green Clinic, for example, is now two weeks.

"We're about 2.5 physicians short," said Francis Osei-Tutu, Northwest medical director with Northern Health.

"We're in an active recruiting process. There are at least two physicians interested that we're trying to pursue. How soon we'll get them is hard to tell."

Osei-Tutu points out that the recruitment is not necessarily for the Green Clinic specifically, but for the community as a whole.

"We've been pretty lucky in Prince Rupert over the years because we've had pretty good stability in the amount of doctors we've enjoyed here as general practitioners," said Briglio. "But having said that, it now looks like we're in that realm that is not uncommon to other communities, which is a shortage of doctors."

According to the most recent report by StatsCan, over four million Canadians don't have a family doctor. Nearly 25 per cent of those without family doctors living in rural areas go to the emergency room for their medical issues.

Prince Rupert seems to be following this trend.

"We're short and that means a considerable amount of folks are using the emergency room as a clinic, which is not necessarily appropriate, but hey, what other options are there at this point?" said Briglio. "Northern Health has tried to the best of their ability to recruit extra doctors to our community in response to our need."

Increasingly, rural areas have turned to offering extra perks to doctors in hopes of luring them to the community. Small towns have been known to offer houses, vacations and extravagant pay.
"We do have incentives," said Osei-Tutu. "Through the B.C. physicians program we have an incentive for covering moving expenses and traveling expenses. There is also a retention premium."