HARRISON – ‘Our medical system is crumbling and nobody seems to care’
Tranquille Road Medical Clinic.
From Jim Harrison’s editorial in box, a word today from Simon Mason of Kamloops who says “the foundation of our medical system is rapidly crumbling and nobody seems to care!”
ON FRIDAY, Oct. 28 the Tranquille Road Medical Clinic will be closing and I along with 3,500 other patients will join the ranks of the more than 27,000 Kamloopsians, and hundreds of thousands of British Columbians without a doctor.
According to Health Match, this province has over 650 vacancies for doctors, 450 or 65 per cent are for family practitioners which has been escalating over the last 4years. As the 8th largest city in the province, Kamloops has 118 family practitioners, all of whom are taking no new patients because of their higher-than-average workload.
With this problem and the province’s aging population I think it’s time for our province to make this a top priority and come up with a plan that will attract new physicians by providing signing bonuses, and curtail those exiting by providing locums, nursing practitioners or other health professionals to reverse the escalating loss of family practitioners.
This practice of forcing citizens to line up like a bunch of cattle is not only putting additional pressure on walk in clinics, ambulance services and hospitals but will, if it hasn’t already, one day affect you as our doctors are also getting older and close to retirement.
SIMON MASON
Listen to Jim Harrison’s editorials weekdays on Radio NL, and to the Jim Harrison Show at 9:08 a.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Contact him at jharrison@radionl.com.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
I do believe that some of the fault rests upon the formation of the Health Regions”, it would appear to me that MOST of the designated health dollars go to upper management, and every person in upper management then must have an assistant and so on and so on, nearly all the designated health dollars fo to the very top heave management, this did not used to be how things ran smoothly in years past.
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Somehow no one seems to know – Doctors who complete medical school anywhere other than in BC have to write qualifying exams to practice in BC. BC is the only province in Canada where those students must wait 6 months after graduating to write those exams. Needless to say, by the time that 6 months is up those people have found positions not in BC. Most of them come out of medical school with huge debts. They want to start practicing right away. Does anyone but me wonder why BC has this practice? Is it the government, the medical association, a collusion of the two? I cannot seem to get an answer to this anywhere. However, it certainly limits the number of new doctors who come to this province and therefore the amount of money needed to be paid into medical care since people cannot get care. I have a daughter who lives in Airdrie, Alberta (population just over 60,000.) I visit there often. Last time I checked (about 8 months ago) there were 14 walk-in clinics. On a couple of occasions over the past 5 years I have needed to see a doctor while there and both times was able to see a doctor immediately. The walk-in clinics there are actually that. You walk in and see a doctor either immediately or within a very short time. You DO NOT line up at 7 in the morning outside in whatever weather hoping you are close enough to the front of the line to actually see a doctor who will allow you to present one and only one symptom. Yes, there is something seriously wrong with our medical system.
I would also be interested to find out if doctors in other provinces are as strictly limited to the number of patients they may see in a day. Also, who is limiting the nurse practitioners in this province? Again, it is the Ministry of Health or the medical association or both? I certainly wish we could get some real answers to these questions and some actual solutions to the problem.
By the way, where is that clinic that Terry Lake announced would be opened on the North Shore in September of 2016??? Promises, promises and now that he has his pension securely in his pocket he is leaving politics.
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Lets start a petition calling for all the provincial MLAs to use walk in clinics until every BC resident that wants a family doctor has one. See what they would think of our medical system then.
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It’s not that nobody cares. We peasants care plenty! It is the ruling classes that don’t care and we even have the “Health Minister” and the “Transportation Minister” in our ridings. Wonder what it looks like in places that didn’t elect the “proper” MLA’s ?Obviously time to get ride of that bunch in May!
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I am in the same boat with Dr. W Dong.
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Again would have to absolutely agree with Mr. Harrison. The medical system is broken and British Columbians are all suffering for it. Large numbers of us could die, because we are on waiting lists of four, five and even longer months. I think that we have to ask ourselves, what led to this type of situation arising? Is there a consistent answer. We can vote for whoever we want to vote for, but it won’t make any difference, wannabe politicians will promise us the moon and when elected will just do what the bosses tell them to do.
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fyi – Harrison did not write this editorial. It was a guest editorial.
I disagree that there is no hope and that we have no power – if we make health THE election issue and we give the politicians a mandate to try to fix it, maybe we can get actually get some action.
The BC Libs have left the health care system much degraded from what they inherited way back in 2000 when they took over. They should be called out on their failure to act sooner, and held accountable for the current state of affairs and challenges ahead with regards to trying to change it when it is so far gone! We shouldn’t be afraid to demand better! I think we should all be working together on this issue – as you have noted, our lives may well depend on it.
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Mr. Harrison is 100% right. The system has failed and no one cares. There are thousands of BC residents sitting in their homes in pain. How can we possibly believe that a 1 year wait line e.g. for a knee replacement is acceptable, we have a problem. It is very scary. If we focused on Health Care like we do LNG maybe we would all be happier people. Next election I am going to vote for the party that is fixated on improving health care, even if it is the NDP, and I have never done that in my life.
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