Doctor delays raises questions of intent
Many years ago, I suffered a detached retina in my right eye. My family physician sent me to Dr. Malvinder Hoonjan who, after examining my eye, made an appointment with retinal surgeons in Vancouver who treated me. I was sent to Vancouver because, at that time, Kelowna General Hospital (KGH) did not support retinal surgery and the closest surgical facility in Kamloops was fully booked for that week. The urgent need for surgery necessitated my traveling to Vancouver.
And because of the nature of the surgery, I was required to remain in Vancouver for several days because traveling back to Kelowna over mountain passes would put enormous pressure on my eye and risk damage.
As a result of this experience, I became interested in why KGH, a designated quaternary care site, was not doing specialized retinal surgery, particularly when it had resident within the city a qualified practitioner.
What I eventually learned was that regional politics was the major cause of this counterproductive situation. Moving the retinal surgery to Kelowna from Kamloops would, in the minds of senior people at Interior Health, cause political problems in dealing with the hospital and medical staff in that city.
So as a consequence, Kelowna patients were shipped off to Kamloops or Vancouver thereby prioritizing patient care and convenience second to minimizing administrators’ problems.
Dr. Hoonjan has remained my eye doctor ever since. Three years after my first operation, I was in Ottawa when once again I knew I had a detached retina in the same eye. What to do? Well, I called Malvinder from Ottawa at 9 a.m. my time, waking him up. After reminding me in a jocular fashion of the time in Kelowna he listened to my tail of woe and said he would call me back ASAP. And he did.
He arranged for the head of retinal surgery in the prime teaching facility in Canada to see me at an Ottawa hospital an hour later and, at 2 a.m. after lifethreatening emergencies had been dealt with, operated on my eye. So my sad story had a happy denouement.
In July 2019, when one of the two eye surgeons in Kamloops chose to retire, it was decided by Interior Health to consolidate retinal surgery for the region in Kelowna.
Interior Health announced to the remaining surgeon in Kamloops and Dr. Hoonjan in Kelowna that Interior Health was in the process of drawing up a job description for two surgical positions in Kelowna General Hospital and invited both the specialist from Kamloops and Dr. Hoonjan in Kelowna to apply for these positions, which would give them access to operating rooms at KGH.
Dr. Hoonjan assumed this meant that
Interior Health wanted him to continue with active hospital privileges as he had previously had in Kamloops and provide hospital-based retinal surgery at KGH. Interior Health disabused him of that belief. In September 2020, the health authority informed Dr. Hoonjan that they had refused his application. He was also informed that his hospital privileges in Kamloops were being revoked so he literally had no venue in which to practice his surgical skills.
Dr. Hoonjan appealed this decision. To his mind the process had been procedurally flawed because, he believed, the health authority did not properly check his references and had failed to comply with its own stated anti-racism and diversity policies. A hearing before the hospital appeals board was finally held in November 2021. The board has yet to render a decision eight months after that hearing. Faced with the statute of limitations, Dr. Hoonjan recently filed a suit against Interior Health.
Undoubtedly I am biased, since Dr. Hoonjan has provided me with outstanding care over many years. But I have to wonder why Interior Health took so long to hear the appeal and why eight months later no decision has yet been rendered. I have to conclude that IH really wants my doctor out of the district. But, I submit, IH administrators are far to well-compensated to deal with challenges by hoping they will go away. The alternate explanation is that this is a case of indifference or ineptitude.
Maybe this unfortunate situation goes some way towards explaining why British Columbians are concerned about access to timely care.