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B.C.’s health-care crisis is unrelenting. What can be done to fix it?

Situation Critical is a series from CBC British Columbia reporting on the barriers people in this province face in accessing timely and appropriate health care.

A stylized phrase reading 'SITUATION CRITICAL', made to read like a red heartbeat monitor.

Vancouver Island resident Joy Williamson hasn’t had a family doctor for 10 years. 

During that time, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. 

While she’s undergoing treatment right now, she worries about what will happen once that treatment is over, particularly if the cancer returns. 

“I will be released not having a [general practitioner]. That really concerns me.”

Her story is all too familiar in B.C. 

An estimated one in five — nearly a million — British Columbians do not have a family doctor, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the health-care crisis in B.C. Emergency rooms in rural communities have been forced to close. Wait times for emergency and specialized care continue to climb, and a lack of paramedics has had severe, sometimes fatal consequences. 

Allan Greenwood’s sister Lorrie Williams suffered a stroke last month and waited an hour for an ambulance, despite living just minutes away from the hospital in New Westminster. 

She’s now partially paralyzed, and Greenwood is worried about her future. 

“I’m angry at the people who get paid to look after the system, who aren’t doing their job, who allowed it to get to this condition. And people are going to continue to get brain damage or die because the ambulance isn’t there. When you need an ambulance, you need an ambulance.”

Michael Mort, 82, who suffers from cardiac and neurological conditions, was suddenly without a doctor after his retirement in Victoria last year. His wife, Janet Mort, went so far as to put an ad in the local newspaper looking for a care provider. Luckily for Mort, it worked. 

“All I could think of was [to] go public. Surely, there’s a compassionate doctor out there who will hear my appeal and squeeze him in as one more patient,” Janet Mort said. 

The list goes on.

All this, while the COVID-19 pandemic persists and the toxic drug crisis claims hundreds of lives each month.

Some blame the province’s fee-for-service model, others, the immense pressure put on health-care providers.

“I don’t think there’s an easy answer,” said emergency and family physician Kara Perdue. Perdue works in Clearwater, B.C., where the emergency room has been closed several times in recent months because of staffing. 

She wants decision-makers, such as provincial and federal ministers and local health authorities, to speak directly to health-care staff about the issues they’re witnessing in order to come up with a plan. 

Additionally, she said funding for other types of health care, such as mental health support and seniors programs, will take the pressure off primary and emergency health providers.

Long-term, Perdue said, there needs to be more training for doctors and nurses. 

“I think some of it is the change in expectation of the jobs of nurses and doctors compared to what it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago,” she said. 

“A lot of people coming out into either profession don’t feel adequately prepared from the schooling they’ve had.”

On Tuesday, Sept. 20, CBC Vancouver will host a town hall to discuss the crisis and what can be done to help alleviate the situation. 

Hosts Belle Puri and Anita Bathe will be joined by B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix, family physician Dr. Rita McCracken and Dr. Ramneek Dosanjh, the president of Doctors of B.C.

How to watch

The town hall begins at 6 p.m. PT and will run until 7 p.m. PT.

You can listen to the town hall on CBC Radio One across the province, watch it on CBC TV and live stream the town hall on CBC Gem, YouTube, Facebook and cbc.ca/bc. Email your questions for the panellists to bcasks@cbc.ca

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