It's been a year since the premier made an election promise pledging a new hospital patient tower in Nanaimo, and a health-care advocacy group is now calling it a broken promise.
The Fair Care Alliance has launched a new campaign it's calling 'Promises Made, Promises Broken' criticizing a perceived lack of progress on the file.
"We seem to still be ignored and nothing's come forth on the promise, so it's definitely time to step up again and say, 'hey, you got re-elected based on this issue in this area; how come nothing's happening?'" said Donna Hais, chairperson of the Fair Care Alliance.
Premier David Eby made the patient tower promise last September at an election campaign town hall at the Beban Park Social Centre, and at the same time, acknowledged the region's need for cardiac catheterization care.
The B.C. Ministry of Infrastructure provided a statement to the News Bulletin this week, saying that "a new inpatient tower and a range of expanded services" represent Phase 2 of Island Health's proposed two-phase redevelopment of Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, with Phase 1 including the cancer centre now under construction.
"We are optimistic about opportunities to advance the new tower over the course of the government’s four-year mandate," the statement added.
Janice Perrino, chairperson of the Nanaimo Regional Hospital District, met with deputy infrastructure minister Bobbi Plecas, local MLAs and Island Health CEO Kathy MacNeil this week at the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention in Victoria, and said she feels optimistic that the patient tower project is in the works.
Perrino said Island Health considers the project "top of the list" and said while the ministry hasn't made assurances, she believes the province understands the need on the central and north Island.
"You want to make sure that you're telling the story of the 'why' again. Why are we here, what's the real need? Because we don't want that lost when it gets to the treasury board. We want them keeping Nanaimo very clearly top of mind."
The regional hospital district has offered to pay for the patient tower business plan and Perrino said the province will take the district up on the offer, but won't launch the business plan process until it is confident in its ability to follow through with project delivery.
"The process is moving forward. Is it fast enough? No, but it's moving forward," she said.
Cardiac care need is 'most acute'
The Fair Care Alliance is also trying to get across to the province that cardiac catheterization lab services at NRGH can't wait the decade it would take to build a patient tower. Hais said the alliance has done a "huge amount of work" on consultation and costing for a cath lab that she says could be up and running in three years' time.
"[It] is an erroneous concept to think that we can wait 10 years for a tower and a cath lab would come in a tower," she said. "We're well beyond that. We're the oldest population in Canada, our patients are the most acute, we have the heaviest burden of cardiac care of anywhere else in Canada and yet we live below the standard of care."
Dr. David Forrest, president of the Nanaimo Medical Staff Association, said a cath lab can't be part of a patient tower because it needs adjacency to the emergency department to ensure catheterization can happen as quickly as possible. He and 90 per cent of NRGH's physicians, just since last week, signed a petition demanding immediate commitment to establishing cardiac catheterization services within three years.
"It speaks to the anger in the medical community for the lack of services here," the doctor said. "We want to hold the health authority and the politicians to account for the harm that's being done to our patients."
The statement from the Ministry of Infrastructure noted that expanding cardiac services in the central Island, including at NRGH, is a priority for hospital staff, the health authority and the province. The ministry pointed to Island Health's work over recent months with doctors, medical staff and other stakeholders "to design a new cardiac care model," though Forrest classified that work as the latest of five studies on the topic over the course of 20 years of inequitable health services on the Island.
"There is still significant work ahead to build a central Island tertiary service that delivers safe, high-quality, and sustainable care," the ministry stated. "This work is already underway, including creating a cardiology consult service, assessing space options at NRGH, and developing the clinical structures needed to support a cardiac catheterization service."
Community meeting upcoming
The Fair Care Alliance will host a community meeting Oct. 16 at 6:30 p.m. at Nanoose Place Community Centre, where those in attendance will hear from advocates, health-care workers and patients.
Both Forrest and Hais mentioned that inequitable distribution of tertiary health services impacts health-care accessibility for all Vancouver Island residents because of all the central and north Island patients needing to access care on the south Island.
"Until fair and equitable distribution of health care spending actually starts happening, then nobody here is being treated fair and equitably," Hais said. "So I think that the community needs to be sharing that with our neighbours to the south, so that we're all speaking with one voice on this health-care conversation."
Although Perrino doesn't agree that the patient tower promise has been broken, she appreciates that the Fair Care Alliance is bringing other community voices to the issue.
"None of us are going to stop pushing for this because we know it's needed. Fair Care is working their side and that's fine, and we're definitely working our side … We won't give up. We will never give up."
