Williams Lake city council is hoping to meet with Interior Health Authority (IH) board member Chief Willie Sellars to discuss the city’s concerns about healthcare delivery services to the community and region.
During the committee of the whole meeting Tuesday, Jan. 9, Coun. Scott Nelson put forwarded a motion to schedule a meeting with Sellars because he is the local government appointee to the IH board.
“This was recommended to me by nurses and doctors to start meeting with individual board members to make sure our message is being heard very clearly,” Nelson said.
Referring to limited physician coverage between Dec. 15 to 21 at Cariboo Memorial Hospital that resulted in patients being transported to other area hospitals, and the New Year’s baby born in Kamloops to parents from Williams Lake, Nelson said it is about ensuring health care remains a top priority.
“Health care is on the top of everybody’s mind,” he said. “Five years ago there was 75 per cent satisfaction. Today 75 per cent of the people are cranky about what’s going on.”
Sellars told the Tribune he’d love to meet with council.
“We are all champions for this region and want better services for our people,” he said.
Mayor Surinderpal Rathor added an amendment to Nelson’s motion asking for staff to arrange a meeting with Northcoast MLA Jennifer Rice, who is B.C.’s parliamentary secretary for rural health.
Rathor said Merlin Blackwell, mayor of the District of Clearwater, had suggested council meet with Rice.
Coun. Sheila Boehm said she was in favour of having a meeting.
“By being a squeaky wheel I feel we have got more responses,” Boehm said. “Rural B.C. is at a disadvantage.”
Boehm is president of the North Central Local Government Association and said the organization is organizing a health symposium.
Coun. Angie Delainey said meeting with IH is a good thing, but council should also be looking to the community to try and solve the health care crisis.
“Then we can hand something to the province and say, ‘this is how we think we need to solve it,’ because everybody is telling the same story,” Delainey said. “I honestly don’t think health has the answers either. I think they are chasing their tails just as much as the rest of us.”
Coun. Joan Flaspohler said the health care crisis is everywhere.
“I think we have to be conscious of where our efforts need to go. As a council we should be staying in our lane and thinking about what we can do to make this community the best it can be so when we have a doctor or nurse come here they want to stay here,” Flaspohler said.
Nelson responded it is because of council’s actions the city is slated to have a walk-in clinic in Williams Lake.
“It was city council that raised it, lobbied for it, got additional support for it and got it on the docket for Interior Health and pushed in front of the Central Cariboo Regional Hospital District for funding formula,” Nelson said. “That wasn’t going to happen and was not even their consideration until we raised the issue and said we are short - 15,000 people don’t have doctors in our region.”
The Cariboo Chilcotin is an aging community and needs to stay on top of things, he added.
Coun. Michael Moses said he agreed with both Flaspohler’s and Nelson’s approaches, adding “they are both right in my opinion.”
“When Coun. Flaspohler says we can focus on other things and try to make doctors stay - we can do that, but as Coun. Nelson also says, we can also focus on getting more accomplishments to getting better health care in our region - as we already have - it’s shown to work.”
Moses said the city can do both of those things.
“I don’t think it’s an either-or, I think it’s a situation where we have to figure out our timetable and figure out how to do both. This isn’t one person right, one person wrong. I think we can go down both paths simultaneously.”
All of council agreed with asking to meet with Sellars and Rice and will vote on the motion at the next regular meeting.
READ MORE: Williams Lake’s New Year’s baby born at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops Jan. 1
READ MORE: UPDATE: Cariboo Memorial Hospital unable to admit inpatients Dec. 15-21
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