By ROY WOOD

 

MLA Linda Larson remains optimistic about the future of the emergency room (ER) at the South Okanagan General Hospital (SOGH), suggesting the health authority wouldn’t be putting money into a service it is planning to close.

“There is money on the table for the emergency room,” the member for Boundary Similkameen said in an interview with ODN this morning. It would make no sense for Interior Health (IH) to be spending close to a million dollars to upgrade the ER in Oliver if there was a plan in the works to close the facility, she said.

Larson acknowledged there has been a recent delay in the project, but she said an IH official explained to her it was because the original architect on the upgrade had to be replaced.

The $970,000 project was announced early this year. According to a recent release from IH, the upgrade aims to “improve patient privacy, flow and the overall quality (of) care.” The design work is expected to be completed early this winter and then proceed to tender.

As for recent concerns expressed about the ER staying open, Larson said, “I don’t believe there is a looming threat.”

She said there have been just “three closures of the ER in two years … To me, that’s not a crisis.”

A group of doctors who manage the scheduling of physicians in the ER appeared before Oliver council recently expressing their frustration with not being able to fill the 90 shifts a month in the rotation. They also worry that as the staffing issues get worse, the ER may face closure.

Central to the problem is the fee-for-service basis upon which the ER doctors are paid, which results in them earning less at SOGH than they would in their private practices of at other hospitals.

Larson said she has been advocating, as have the doctors, for the implementation of a Alternative Payment Program (APP), which would see them paid by the hour.

She said she recently cornered provincial Health Minister Adrian Dix in the hallway at the legislature but he was unwilling to commit to an APP, but did not rule out the idea.

Larson said Dix told her there would be some “interesting things coming out” early in 2019, related to health care in the South Okanagan. She believes the announcements will be about the proposed acute care facility for Osoyoos, rather than the SOGH.

Larson dropped by Osoyoos town hall this morning to meet and congratulate the two new members of council and to answer questions. The only one she got was about the recently completed referendum on reform of the BC electoral system.

She said the results will likely come out early in the new year, but that her impression is that opinion is divided about 50-50 between wanting to move to some form of proportional representation and retaining the current first-past-the-post system.