Urology services are back in 100 Mile House, which is good news for local patients who no longer have to travel two or more hours to receive medical treatment for bladder or prostate problems.
Interior Health (IH) announced the return of the service back in October, following persistent advocacy and fundraising from the South Cariboo Health Foundation (SCHF).
Dr. Derek Ottem, Dr. Lee Jonat and Dr. Stephen Faddegon are the three urologists from Royal Inland Hospital (RIH) in Kamloops now travelling periodically to 100 Mile District General Hospital to provide urology services.
The doctors will make close to 30 visits a year, seeing 20 to 30 patients per visit, and will be starting again in the spring.
The most common patients the urologists will be seeing are those who have had bladder cancer, says Dr. Ottem, who started treating patients in 100 Mile House two weeks ago.
This is kind of a unique situation, he says of the outreach program.
“It’s not the sort of thing where we’re going to be able to start coming to all the different small communities. Our type of speciality is something that still needs to be centralized. There’s a lot of infrastructure that’s needed to run our service.”
The driving force behind bringing the urology services back to 100 Mile House was the SCHF’s purchase of instruments and sterilization equipment the doctors needed to get started, Dr. Ottem explains.
“The primary focus of the trip is to perform a procedure called cystoscopy, where we look inside the bladder with a scope. Then we also see patients with prostate problems, recurrent bladder infections, prostate cancer, incontinence, people with blood in their urine, things like that.”
SCHF chair Mary Shennum says she’s grateful the program is working and she’s happy patients can receive treatment closer to home.
“It’s a win-win situation for people in the area and for the doctors.”
The outreach service costs approximately $342,400, which includes contributions shared between the SCHF ($175,000), the Cariboo Chilcotin Regional Hospital District ($125,000), and an annual commitment of $42,400 for two years by IH.
“I really think it’s important to know the foundation was really one of the driving forces behind this,” says Dr. Ottem who encourages people to support the SCHF.
“They’ve obviously done a lot of good work for people in the community.”
