Doctors flag crisis at Surrey hospital
VANCOUVER — A series of letters from doctors raising the alarm about the management of patient care at a Metro Vancouver hospital is placing British Columbia’s largest health authority under scrutiny.
The latest open letter about Surrey Memorial Hospital came from its Medical Staff Association and said management at Fraser Health and the B.C. Health Ministry have not provided “any tangible support” for overstretched emergency-room doctors.
“Your continued silence and inaction on this issue is placing the health and well-being of Surrey residents in jeopardy,” the association wrote in the letter addressed to B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix.
The letter was shared with the Canadian Press by an association doctor on Tuesday.
“We implore you to take immediate action … and if you cannot do this the only responsible recourse is to place the Surrey Memorial Hospital ER on diversion.”
In the last three weeks, doctors from different disciplines within Fraser Health have sent out at least four letters decrying what they described as a lack of doctors and hospital capacity to handle the demands of one of B.C.’s fastestgrowing regions.
Surrey Memorial’s emergency doctors published their own complaint letter on May 15, followed two weeks later by a letter from 36 women’s health physicians at the same hospital outlining a “critical scarcity of resources” that contributed to the death of a newborn baby.
This week, a CBC report said dozens of emergency doctors from Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster and Eagle Ridge Hospital in Port Moody — both under Fraser Health purview — also wrote a joint letter describing similarly dire situations.
The B.C. Ministry of Health referred comments on the letters to Fraser Health, which in turn referred comment back to the ministry.
Surrey Memorial Hospital obstetrician and gynecologist Claudine Storness-Bliss, one of the physicians who signed the letter regarding women’s health, said it came as a direct response to the first letter by the hospital’s emergency doctors because of how much the two situations mirrored each other.
“There’s nothing in [the ER doctors’] letter that is surprising to us,” Storness-Bliss said. “We all know this. But I think the public doesn’t know, and that was the purpose of [our] letter.”
Storness-Bliss said Surrey Memorial Hospital’s family birthing unit was expanded a decade ago to accommodate 4,000 deliveries every year, but the facility now handles roughly 6,000 annually.
The letter from the Medical Staff Association says the lack of doctors in other departments is forcing ER doctors to go “well outside their scope of practice” in providing care to admitted patients..
Joshua Greggain, president of Doctors of B.C , said that while other health authorities aren’t facing the same level of criticism as Fraser Health, similar labour crunches and challenges are common across B.C.
On Wednesday, the Surrey Hospital Foundation held a summit meeting of 60 stakeholders in an attempt to find solutions to the staffing and patient-care crisis, with the group saying it will produce a report outlining “priority solutions and recommended actions” at an unannounced date.