Everyone Has A Stake

The community of Princeton and Area H is indebted to Dr. Barbara Pesut of UBC Okanagan for her involvement in the Community Consultation held on January 29 at Riverside Community Centre. Dr. Pesut is a nationally recognized researcher and her generous offer to assist us in our efforts is very much appreciated. Dr. Pesut has extensive experience that began with several years at Princeton General Hospital and Ridgewood Lodge. She feels a connection to our community and this may have been part of the reason why she offered her services to us. For more information on Dr.Pesut, including a list of her current research and recent publications, visit http://www.ubc.ca/okanagan/nursing/Faculty/bpesut.html

The Community Consultation followed a research-based process whose planning required pre-knowledge of the number of participants which explains why it was by invitation only. This also satisfied the requirements built into the consultation process. Continue reading

Rural Health Services Research Network

RHSRNbc Issue 20 February 2013
The Network Goes to Princeton!

The Rural Health Services Research Network of BC was honored to be invited to Princeton’s Healtcare Community Consultation, which took place on January 29, 2012. This consultation brought together a diverse group of community members and stakeholders to discuss and identify the current healthcare challenges faced by Princeton and its surrounding area. Over forty community members participated within small focus groups, sharing their personal experiences with the delivery of Princeton’s healtcare. The consultation was spearheaded by Save Our Hospital Coalition (SOHC) and UBC-Okanagan’s Dr. Barb Pesut and her team of researchers. Findings from this consultation will be used to inform potential areas of future reserach, and ultimately it is hoped that these findings will help lead to an improved model of healthcare delivery in Princeton and other rural communities.

Visit the RHSRN BC website.

CBC Radio – on Community Consultation

UBC Okanagan to help Princeton health care crisis

The town of Princeton has turned to researchers at the University of B.C. Okanagan to try to figure out how to fix health care problems in the community.

Since May, people in Princeton have had to make due with an emergency room that’s closed 4 nights a week and they have been lobbying and meeting with the Interior Health Authority and provincial government officials to change that, but there’s still no solution.

So community leaders decided to bring in some expert help by calling researchers from UBC Okanagan to brainstorm ways to improve health care in Princeton.

C.B.C. Reporter Brady Strachan spoke to people in Princeton about the issues.

Listen to CBC Radio Daybreak South coverage here.

Healthcare Community Consultation Held January 29

On Tuesday, January 29th the Princeton Healthcare Community Consultation was held. Coordinated by Dr. Barbara Pesut of UBC Okanagan and her team of researchers, the consultation was attended by 40 participants representing various stakeholder groups that had been invited to attend.

Ed Staples, organizing committee chair, made opening comments and then introduced Dr. Pesut who described the consultation process that would be followed for the evening. The participants were then divided into focus groups who met in separate rooms to respond to the standardized questions presented by the facilitators. Recorders kept notes on flip charts and an audio recording was made. The participants then reassembled in the theatre to hear the recorders present the results. Following closing comments by Dr. Pesut, the participants then had the opportunity to “vote” for the issues that they felt were the most important outcomes of the consultation.

The data collected in this consultation will now be analyzed by Dr. Pesut and her team who will prepare a report that will be shared with our community. This report will be posted on this website.

For further information, click on the Community Consultation links at the top of our webpage.

 

 

Princeton Healthcare Community Consultation

On January 29, the Town of Princeton, Area H (RDOS), Interior Health Authority, University of British Columbia-Okanagan and Save Our Hospital Coalition will be holding a Community Healthcare Consultation. The purpose for this workshop is to identify challenges facing healthcare in Princeton and Area and to provide information that may be used in the development of an improved healthcare model for our community.

Please note that this is not a public forum. However, if you would like your voice to be heard, please contact any community leader to have them bring your comments or concerns forward. Over 50 community stakeholders from Princeton and Area have been invited to attend this consultation. For the name of a representative that you could contact, please email Ed Staples at edwardstaples8@gmail.com or call him at 250-295-08222.

The consultation will be conducted by Dr. Barbara Pesut from UBC Okanagan, who will facilitate the process. Dr. Pesut has been involved in healthcare since 1982 and worked at Princeton General Hospital and Ridgewood Lodge for several years early in her career. She is presently Associate Professor in the School of Nursing at UBCO and holds a Canada Research Chair in Health, Ethics, and Diversity. Dr. Pesut’s current research looks at healthcare delivery models for end of life care in rural communities.

The data collected in this consultation will be analyzed by a team of researchers from UBC Okanagan who will prepare a report to be shared with the community following the consultation.

Take Action on Seniors Care

(The following article is from the Fall 2012 issue of The Seniors Hub, newsletter of the South Vancouver Seniors Council. It is reproduced here with the permission of Joan Wright, Seniors Hub Coordinator. For more information, please visit their website at www.theseniorshub,org)

Seniors and people with disabilities deserve to live with dignity and respect.

To take action on home and community care, please:

Tell Health Minister Dr. Margaret MacDiarmid that you want full implementation of the Ombudspersons’ recommendations on seniors’ care. Send a letter to the provincial government demanding that it make critical changes to improve the lives of BC seniors and people with disabilities. Call on the province to scrap its user fee scheme for hospital care. Tell the BC government to reverse penalizing fee increases for residential care. Continue reading

How does BC healthcare funding compare to other provinces? (CCPA)

“While health care has fared relatively well compared to other areas in provincial budgets over the last decade, BC has not kept up with other Canadian provinces. In 2001, BC had the second highest level of health spending per capita in Canada; by 2011 it had fallen to second lowest. This might not be cause for concern if BC’s lower rate of growth in health spending were the result of widespread efficiencies as opposed to restraint policies that reduced access to needed home and community care services and hospitals. “ Marcy Cohen, Caring for BC’s Aging Population, July 2012, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. http://www.policyalternatives.ca/hcc-for-seniors

Protect Our Public Health Care System – Take Action!

HERE’S A DIRECT ACTION YOU CAN TAKE DURING “MEDICARE WEEK” TO PROTECT OUR PUBLICLY FUNDED HEALTH CARE SYSTEM.

YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

The problem

One of the outstanding issues we are dealing with in our health care system here is the increasing number of people who are paying privately (if they can afford it) for health care services which used to be publicly supported. Also, people in rural areas do not have equal access to health care services and either cover the cost of transportation to larger centres themselves or simply do not go because it is unaffordable. The basis for publicly funded healthcare arises from the Canada Health Accord which is currently being renegotiated by the provinces. There has been minimum input from the federal government except to tell the provinces it will implement a non-negotiable reduction in health care transfer payments to the provinces in 2014. We want to show the federal government that health care is on the minds of Canadians and we want Medicare protected, strengthened, and extended through a 2014 Health Accord.

Here’s how you can help.
Please contact the following elected officials sometime during the weekend and leave an email message or a voice message on their telephone answering services. You can use the suggested message under the email addresses or you can make up your own. Health activist groups from across Canada will also be on Parliament Hill later in the week to meet with MPs to deliver the message that they need to support a new Accord.

Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada
Email him at stephen.harper@parl.gc.ca or leave a voice message at 1-613-992-4211, or write to him at House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6.

Hon. Leona Aglukkaq, Federal Minister of Health
Email her at leona.aglukkaq@parl.gc.ca, voice message at 1-613-992-2848 or write to her at House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6

Hon. Dr. Margaret MacDiarmid, BC Minister of Health Email her at margaret.macdiarmid.mla@leg.bc.ca , voice message at 1-250-953-3547 or write to her at Room 337, Parliament Buildings, Victoria, BC V8V 1X4 page1image20040

Here are some sample messages that you can use:

Dear Mr Harper/Mrs Aglukkaq/Dr MacDiarmid,
I’m calling/emailing you today about my concerns with the lack of federal and provincial leadership for health care. Canada is currently without a National Seniors Action Plan and yet, they are the fasting growing age group in our country. Our seniors are in desperate need of public, not-for-profit home, community and long-term care. One in ten Canadians cannot afford to fill their prescriptions for medication, yet the federal government walked away from talks on pharmacare that were promised in the 2004 Health Accord. Canadians are asking for a Seniors Action Plan, but we need federal leadership to make this happen.

We are in need of these services and more. But until the federal government returns to the 2014 Health Accord negotiation table, national strategies will not be formed. It is imperative that Prime Minister Harper return to the table and that BC representatives work hard to ensure we have a publicly funded health care system which is properly funded under the new Accord.

If you are on Twitter, participate in a national tweet-in! During question period (QP) at 2:15pm on Tuesday, December, 4th people across the country will be tweeting their MP, the Federal Health Minister, Deputy Health Minister, and Health Critics. We’ll have pre-written tweets–that do not require you to have a twitter account–but we also encourage you to write your own! We’ll be posting a list of popular hashtags (#) and MP twitter accounts (@) for you to participate easily. Tweet @CouncilofCDNS or @CHC and we’ll re-tweet to keep the pressure on!

Thanks to the BC Health Coalition for their help with this campaign and thank you for your commitment to publicly funded health care!

In Defence of Canada’s Public Health System

Presentation by Ed Staples, Presdient, SOHC
Alex Atamanenko’s Public Forum
Princeton Legion Hall

November 14, 2012

The founding principle of health care in Canada is equality. This principle gave us the Canada Health Act which provides for equal access to quality health care regardless of who you are, where you live, or how much money you make. Unfortunately, this principle is under attack at both the provincial and federal level. These attacks come in the form of budget cuts justified by the alarmist message that health care costs are unsustainable.

Sustainability rationale is a myth. As a percentage of Canada’s Gross Domestic Product, health care spending has remained steady at between 4 and 5% since 1975. The unsustainability myth is the result of governments portraying health care costs as a percentage of overall budget. What, in fact, has happened is that health care costs have remained level as support for other government sectors has decreased, resulting in a perceived percentage increase in health care costs. This perception is the justification used by government to cut back on health care budgets.

In solidarity with the BC Health Coalition, Princeton Save Our Hospital Coalition opposes any erosion of the Canada Health Act’s principles of universality, comprehensiveness, portability, accessibility, and public administration. We are against user fees, privatization, corporatization, and any other barriers to equal access to health care.

In 2004, federal and provincial first ministers signed a ten-year Canada Health Accord, identifying several priorities for health care reform in Canada, including:

  • reducing wait times and improving access;
  • home care;
  • primary health care reform, including electronic health records;
  • health research and innovation; and
  • accountability and reporting to citizens.

As mentioned previously, our public health care system reflects core Canadian values of equality and equal access. We need a new health accord that puts these values first. Public health care is affordable and sustainable. It’s privatization that we can’t afford.

According to the BC Health Coalition, renewal of the Health Accord in 2014 must be based on predictable, sustainable federal funding that includes a six percent escalator for a full ten years. Commitment to a federally financed Canada Health Transfer equalization formula will ensure we continue to build a fair, accountable and cost effective public health care system that provides high quality care for all Canadians. Unfortunately, the federal government has made it clear that they will not be taking these steps unless Canadians demand that they do.

In the 2009 discussion paper by the Society of Rural Physicians in Canada they state that “For Canadian health research we should aim for development and support of community based rural health research involving rural physicians and other health care providers.” SOHC agrees that research is essential to the understanding of the health care issues that face not only Princeton but all rural BC communities. We are working with researchers such as Dr. Barb Pesut of UBC Okanagan, Dr. Stefan Grzybowski of the Rural Health Services Resource Network, and Kristina Plamondon of IHA to conduct community based research with a goal to develop an improved and sustainable health care model for Princeton.

To summarize, this is how SOHC sees the problem:

  1. As a result of inadequate funding from provincial and federal governments rural remote areas of BC have witnessed a drastic reduction in health services over the past fifteen years. This has meant a loss of acute care beds, reduced accessibility, and scheduled closures of primary health care services.
  2. Movement toward the privatization of health services is creating a two tiered system where only those with money will be able to access the best health care. Instead of reducing costs, this system has the potential to raise the average cost of health care for all British Columbians.
  3. People on disability and seniors are the most at risk from recent changes. With the reduction in home support, home nursing and community services, the government expects those on fixed pensions to pay for private sector services out of their own pocket to keep them living comfortably and safely in their own homes.

So what should be done?

  1. We ask the Ministry of Health Services to stop hiding behind the myth of unsustainability and honor its obligation under the five principles of the Canada Health Act to provide equal access to health care for all citizens. Healthcare is sustainable.
  2. We ask the Federal Minister of Health to honour the Canada Health Act by accepting its responsibility to share health care funding equally with the provinces.
  3. We ask the BC Ministry of Health Services to address the problem of doctor shortages in rural remote communities by offering extra incentives, paid for through public funding. Communities should not have to compete with each other to attract doctors as they are presently forced to do.
  4. We recommend that Canadian medical schools aim for a representative proportion of rural to urban students, because at the present time 90% of medical students come from wealthy urban families. They traditionally return to their urban roots.
  5. We ask that medical students wanting to practice in rural areas receive enhanced training, so that they are highly and broadly skilled for a practice in rural remote communities. Princeton would benefit from this since we are officially classified as a rural remote community.
  6. We ask IHA listen to the people in their care and respect their needs.
  7. And we ask our Member of Parliament to encourage our federal government to stay at the health care table, negotiating with all provincial health ministers to establish a new Canada Health Accord that will provide adequate funding aimed at improving health care for all Canadians.