Elk Valley and South Country Health Care Coalition O.R. Status
Email: patrick@evsos.com Webpage: www.evsos.com/
Rally July 22nd 2004 City Hall Protest Cuts to Surgery IHA attended, Bill Bennett was invited but did not attend "he said he was not invited, which our Fernie Mayor, Randel McNare said he gave him a personal invite, just another sad note about our representation." The rally was well attended by about 200 - 300 people, our largest rally to date. The rally was held on the grounds of City Hall and many attended the meeting afterwards in Council Chambers where IHA presented the fate of surgery. IHA representitives where uneasy about facing the people that they are delivering services to. The croud was peaceful but you could tell that they were irritated by IHA's continued cuts. Ray Bennard said that he felt I quote, "IHA was being ambushed in Fernie". IHA was asked repeatively to financially justify their reasons and they stated there is no financial reason for degrading surgery in Fernie except to make work for a Surgin in Cranbrook. The doctors mentioned that IHA did not even know the number of surgical proceedures that were done in Fernie. The doctors went to their surgical calender and it was mentioned there were 370 not counting other miner surgical proceedures. At the rally we heard stories about the state of the Cranbrook hospital where there is patients in the halls recovering from surgeries because there is no rooms and beds. Although we welcome the expanded surgical services in Cranbrook we feel that it will be a huge loss to our community if we loose surgical services and a burden on Cranbrook health services that will lead to people in Cranbrook not getting proper care. We are also conserned about the time it takes to get to Cranbrook in a variety of weather conditions from Elkford, Sparwood and Fernie. Times that well exceed the golden hour for internal injury patients that will require a surgin to save their life. After one hour the chances of survival dramatically decreases. Ambulance service to Cranbrook has take up to 5 hours to get medical service for some patients. O.R. and support services (PYSIO, XRAY, LAB, Etc.) under attack by province. Possible loss for Elkford of their Physio Therapist. Fernie is loosing 3 jobs in Laundry and laundry is being transported to Cranbrook. The Fernie Laundry was previously going flat out. Our goal is to keep current services including the O.R. and support services (PYSIO, XRAY, LAB, Etc.) for Fernie, Sparwood, Elkford and South Country. We are also looking for a solution to transportation problems for appointments outside the Elk Valley. Informaiton was provided by a local physician at our July 2nd meeting.