It's one thing to play a key role within a health region, but it's quite another to be a fully functioning community hospital.
Much has been said and written recently about Delta Hospital as staff and supporters turn up the heat on government in an effort to restore a surgical program that had the scalpel taken to it more than a decade ago. Doctors went public about six weeks ago in a bid to, among other things, extend operating room hours beyond 3 p.m. so patients requiring urgent procedures could be accommodated here rather than being transferred to another hospital.
Fraser Health has been cool to the idea and has taken pains to change the narrative, reinforcing the notion that every hospital has a role to play in a regional network. To that end, Delta Hospital has been positioned as a day surgery hub where well over 5,000 procedures were performed last year.
With the number of surgeries on the rise, it would seem curious that the alarm has been sounded over restricted operating room hours, but that's because there's a distinct difference in how our local hospital is viewed.
It's great from a regional perspective that patients from Maple Ridge or Langley can travel to Delta for a colonoscopy, and I suspect the ability to accommodate these folks here reduces the pressure elsewhere in the region.
However, our hospital's status as a day surgery centre does little for the local resident in need of an urgent procedure. That's why doctors are concerned. They say every year over 300 patients have to be transferred, resulting in unnecessary costs and delays, to receive care that could easily be provided locally.
"Patients have every right to expect these basic surgeries can be taken care of locally," Dr. Robert Shaw, a spokesperson for the Delta Hospital Medical Staff Association, said back in October when the group went public with its concerns.
Only the largest of hospitals, and Delta falls far short in that regard, can be all things to all patients, but when you're the only hospital in the region that doesn't have a "functioning surgical program" (Shaw's words, not mine), then something isn't right.
As MLA Vicki Huntington recently pointed out, every other municipality in B.C. with over 60,000 people has a hospital that provides such services, yet somehow the FHA doesn't think Delta deserves the same treatment.
Doctors here realize the folly of such logic. Let's hope it doesn't take long for Fraser Health to come to the same conclusion.
