What was supposed to be a six-week closure of the pediatric ward at Kelowna General Hospital (KGH) will likely extend beyond that.
“The service interruption itself is really stressful for parents but the uncertainty is even more frustrating,” said Gavin Dew, Conservative MLA for Kelowna-Mission.
With the closure of the 10-bed unit now in its fourth week, Interior Health (IH) is still unable to say when it will reopen.
In a statement to Global News, IH CEO Susan Brown stated, “Interior Health leadership is fully committed to restoring full services and the entire team at Kelowna General Hospital are committed to addressing the current challenges and reopening the unit as quickly as possible.”
Brown went on to say that reopening will happen as soon as it is safe and feasible but stopped short of providing a more concrete timeline other than stating, “to build towards reopening, one new pediatrician is starting this summer with two more joining in September.”
The ward closed on May 26 so that the few pediatricians left working at the hospital would be available to cover critical services, such as high-risk deliveries.
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Since the ward’s closure, 14 young patients have needed a hospital admission and had to be transferred to other hospitals.
Five of those patients were transferred to Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, nearly 170 km away.
The other transfers involved hospitals in Vernon and Penticton.
“That’s just not acceptable especially for how fast and big Kelowna is growing to not have that for people,” said Brent Watson, a Kelowna father of two young children.
“I just can’t get my head wrapped around it.”
KGH doctors have gone public in recent weeks, claiming the current crisis is the result of an inadequate staffing model that often has one pediatrician on shift and makes it impossible to properly care for all the children needing their attention.
However, they say the calls for change were ignored for years and prompted specialists to resign.
Those resignations culminated in occasional service disruptions and now the lengthy pediatric ward closure.
“Now that they’ve started speaking out, they’ve started asking for better,” Dew said. “I don’t think this is going to stop until there’s a really serious reset in the system.”
That reset many doctors say has to in part involve dual pediatrician coverage 24/7.
On Friday, Global News asked IH if it will commit to the change.
“We have been moving to that split service delivery model for some time, with contracts, compensation and other solutions in place to support it, with the goal of having pediatricians assigned to both areas, one each at both the NICU and the pediatrics unit,” Brown stated.
“We remain committed to ensure all potential compensation strategies are in place to enable the additional capacity in the pediatrics unit and support a collaborative and sustainable model.”
Brown is slated to retire in December.
There have been calls from the BC Conservatives to fast-track the leadership transition in order for a new CEO to begin implementing long-term solutions to the crisis.
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