First it was pediatric care, then maternity and now neurology services at Kelowna General Hospital are being curtailed.
“There’s a major break in access to care for the many people who will inevitably need a general neurologist at Kelowna General Hospital (KGH),” said Dr. Rob Carruthers, a neurologist and the president of Consultant Specialists of B.C.
The service disruptions started on Jan. 1.
In an internal memo obtained by Global News, Interior Health (IH) stated, “During these periods, general neurology services will not be consistently available on site.”
“We need more neurologists is the bottom line,” said Dr. Pete Bosma, IH’s executive director for clinical operations north. “This is a North American-wide and really a worldwide issue.”
Bosma said the changes in services will allow the hospital to preserve coverage for the most critical cases involving stroke patients.
“The volumes of calls for general neurology have become very difficult to work in safely into a stroke call, so we just don’t have as much manpower,” Bosma said.
It means that patients who require neurology care at KGH for issues other than strokes may not have immediate access to a neurologist and instead may have to see a subspecialist.
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“If it was my family member who needed general neurology care in Kelowna and it wasn’t available, I would be quite concerned,” Carruthers said. “Are we missing meningitis? You know? Are we missing multiple sclerosis like this?
“A lot of this is high-risk medicine and so to say that non-neurologists could manage this effectively or that non-neurologists have the same skills to manage general neurology patients, is just simply not true.”
Bosma said he understands the concerns but added that given the resources, or lack thereof, the health authority is doing the best it can.
“There’s urgent things and there’s emergent things and that doesn’t downplay the lack of having that resource available immediately but there are some things that we just simply don’t have access to immediately,” Bosma said.
B.C.’s opposition health critic is blasting the government for what she calls a lack of urgency in its response.
“Am I surprised? No, but what I’m surprised is how slow the minister of health and the health authorities are dealing with this,” said Anna Kindy, MLA for North Island.
“It is a crisis and we have to remember, with crisis, it equates to worse outcomes for patients and also patients falling through the crack and dying because they don’t get to be seen on time.”
Bosma said IH is working to recruit neurologists and restore services but was unable to provide a timeline on when that might happen.
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