BC’s Official Opposition is accusing the provincial government of providing rural British Columbians with “second-class healthcare” after Northern Health announced that patients with high-risk pregnancies may need to be transferred from the University Hospital of Northern BC to other health centres starting in August due to a shortage of specialists.
In a media release posted to Northern Health’s social media accounts on Monday, July 21, the health authority said that like many other medical centres in the province, UHNBC is “experiencing a shortage of Royal College obstetrical specialists that provide care and consultative services to high-risk pregnant individuals.”
This shortage of specialists could result in service reductions starting in August “and there will be occasions where we many need to transfer you (at no cost to you) to another centre in the province to ensure the safety of you and your baby.”
The release encourages pregnant patients to speak with their maternity provider to discuss their birthing plans and to reach out to UHNBC’s labour and delivery department, which is open 24-7, to discuss any symptoms of concern.
Northern Health initially told The Citizen that no spokesperson was available to comment on the situation on July 22 but later provided vice-president of medicine Dr. Ronald Chapman for a phone interview.
He said this is the second time this year there have been service disruptions at UHNBC’s obstetrics department after a 12-hour period on May 29.
When that happened, he said, two patients were diverted to Vanderhoof to give birth and another two were transferred to hospitals in the Interior Health region as a precautionary measure.
There were no issues with the parents who gave birth or their newborns in those cases, Chapman said.
In June and July, UHNBC was able to find to find coverage among local doctors as well as locums. However, the hospital has been unable to fill all its gaps in August, making service reductions likely through the fall until more specialists can be recruited.
He said doctors dealing with high-risk pregnancies need to obtain a certification in obstetrics and gynecology from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.
In Prince George, Chapman said, doctors with this certification also help with caesarian section births. Most births are low risk and can be handled by general practitioners, midwives and nurses.
While there’s a shortage of these specialists across the province, Chapman said a lot of the vacancies in the north come after physicians move either out of BC or to another health authority.
There’s also a shortage when gynecologists and obstetricians take their own parental leave, medical leave or reduce their working hours to improve their work-life balance and prevent burnout.
Sometimes locums have been found from northeast BC or Quesnel, but Chapman said they have been unsuccessful in recruiting them from further south.
To permanently fill vacancies, Chapman said, Northern Health is actively recruiting all across Canada and is going through some applications and interviews with the hope of adding them to the roster.
There are also efforts being made to hire internationally-trained physicians from countries like England and the United States, though this process takes longer due to the need to make sure their credentials are recognized.
In the United States, Chapman said, Northern Health has been advertising positions in all the recognized medical journals and at speciality-specific conferences.
Sometimes these doctors are given a chance to work temporarily in the north to see if it’s a good fit. Towards the end of the year, Chapman said, one doctor from the U.S. will start work at the emergency department in Terrace.
Asked why the health region waited until late July to announce the service reductions, Chapman said they were working to see if they could cover the gaps.
For patients with access to care providers, they can speak with their doctors to determine whether their pregnancy is high risk beforehand and see if the expected due date is likely to be when the service reductions are anticipated.
People in Prince George without access to a doctor can visit the Urgent and Primary Care Centre at Parkwood Place. Chapman said that a few months ago, an unattached pre-natal clinic was established at the centre so that expecting parents can get assessed.
They can also reach out to the Northern Health Virtual Clinic by calling 1-844-645-7811 between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m., seven days a week.
Those who are transferred are likely to be sent to hospital in Kamloops, Kelowna or the BC Women’s Hospital and Health Centre in Vancouver.
Chapman said that high-risk pregnancies, if the parent isn’t in labour, can be transported on the ground. If they run into problems, they will be taken to the closest hospital that can assist them.
He didn’t know the specifics, but Chapman said parents transferred to another community should be able to access a social worker for assistance.
He thanked all the staff at UHNBC who deal with both low- and high-risk births for the work they do and their help in make sure that patients have a good birthing experience during the service reductions.
Also reached by phone on July 22, Doctors of BC president-elect Dr. Adam Thompson said his organization first heard from its members about obstetrician shortages at UHNBC early this year.
Doctors of BC is an association representing more than 16,000 physicians across the province. Thompson is a family physician based out of Courtenay on the east side of Vancouver Island. His term as Doctors of BC president starts in January 2026.
“I gather there are currently three obstetricians in the unit that was ideally designed to have eight,” Thompson said.
“And the doctors have been continuing to work with their colleagues to provide the best care they can, but when there’s three of them when there should be eight, it’s very difficult and not sustainable for them to continue working at that pace and level on a long-term basis.”
Thompson said obstetrician shortages are a struggle across the province, pointing to comments by Health Minister Josie Osborne to that effect made the previous day.
He said his organization is concerned that physicians and specialists are being burdened by a system that is highly utilized and doesn’t have enough of them to go around.
Asked what could be done to improve the situation, Thompson cited recruitment from the United States as the province has already started to do, creating a system through which specialists can better manager their waitlists and having the province’s health authorities work with specialists to improve their systems.
Though it’s more of a long-term solution, Thompson said that improving the number of spaces for medical students and residents in the province at program’s like UNBC’s Northern Medical Program and the new medical school being built at Simon Fraser University will help.
On the international front, he said the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC has just started consultation work on streamlining the recognition of credentials from doctors trained in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Ireland.
“I’m originally from the U.K.,” Thompson said. “Came here 15 years ago and had to bounce through four different sets of exams. You don’t have to do that anymore.”
Going forward, Thompson said, physicians in Prince George want to see Northern Health carry out fulsome and widespread communication on the service reductions beyond just social media announcements.
“I think there’s a responsibility on Northern Health to ensure that all pregnant individuals are aware of the shortages so that patients in some of these circumstances may want to relocate to ensure proper care and will need to plan for this,” he said.
He concluded by saying that his organization is working with northern physicians and Northern Health to attract and retain obstetricians both now and going forward.
The morning after the July 21 media release, the BC Conservatives put out a media release criticizing the health authority and the provincial government for the situation.
The release points out that UHNBC is the only tertiary care hospital for obstetrics in Northern BC and hospitals in Fort St. John, Dawson Creek, Hazelton, Terrace and Prince Rupert send patients with high-risk pregnancies there.
Now these patients may have to travel even farther to give birth.
Prince George-Mackenzie MLA Kiel Giddens said Northern Health had been aware of the problem since January and neither it nor the province had come up with a solution while Prince George-Valemount MLA Rosalyn Bird said that the situation shows that rural British Columbians “are being treated like second-class citizens.”
In a Tuesday, July 22 phone interview, Giddens said that since many people in the affected areas don’t have a family doctor, he wanted to raise the alarm about the issue to make sure patients can arrange for safe deliveries of their newborns.
Following on from the comments made in the release, Giddens said he’s heard of proposals of bringing in OBGYNs from Edmonton or Calgary.
“But there’s been no help from the Provincial Health Services Authority, not from the College of Physicians to help that,” he said. “So, people are at their wits’ end. The doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists all of them want to keep the system running but they’re getting no help.”
He said that having a child is already a stressful time and giving people less than two weeks’ notice that they might have to travel farther than Prince George will only add to that. It’s unacceptable to have that standard of care in a G7 country, he said.
In the short term, Giddens said, he’d like to see the province bring in locums to cover the shortage.
In the long term, he’d like to see better human resources planning and strategy to make sure gaps are addressed not only at UHNBC, but also in places like Mackenzie that have seen their emergency rooms temporarily closed.
While the provincial government is working to attract medical professionals leaving the United States, Giddens said he’s seen no evidence that those brought to BC will end up in Northern Health.
On top of that, he said he’d like to see it made easier for health-care credentials to move between provinces as well as less reliance on foreign credentials.
Though the Legislature is currently not in session, he said he would push Health Minister Josie Osborne to find some local solutions for this and other health-care problems in the province.
Reached by email, a spokesperson from Osborne’s office said the minister was unavailable for an interview.
