The Fraser Health Region is once again embarking on a review, this time by outside advisers – as if this makes much difference. It will probably cost more.
In any case, the cost will be tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the results will be, as with all the previous expert studies; nil.
Please note, the aim is to reduce hospital congestion, not to provide more beds. When the Abbotsford hospital was first envisioned it was to be a municipal hospital of about 400 beds. Over the years, as Abbotsford became a city, the number of beds was reduced in steps to 300 beds – each step costing hundreds of thousands of dollars for new plans.
Then it became a regional referral centre with the cancer centre added, but the number of beds remained the same. Eventually, the hospital was built but only 260 beds were opened; on the advice of experts no doubt.
The addition of the cancer centre was a brilliant move, but would not someone have thought that more beds would be needed also; especially since the hospital now was also to be a regional referral centre?
There are many problems in health care besides hospital overcrowding. Examples are walk-in clinics, fee-for-service, alternative medicine, just to mention a few. What is needed is a government with the guts to overhaul an outmoded system, and that is not likely to happen.
Ed Pankratz
