St. John Hospital in Vanderhoof is experiencing more patient visits and longer waiting room lineups in the wake of a doctor shortage that has closed the hospital emergency room in Fort St. James.
Some patients looking for refills of certain types of medication at the Vanderhoof hospital are being turned away and they are finding it difficult to access doctors since the emergency ward at Stuart Lake Hospital in Fort St. James became a weekend-only operation two weeks ago.
"Anyone presenting to the emergency department who has run out of a critical drug like blood pressure medication or epileptic medication will be looked after because it's in the best interests of keeping them healthy, but they will not fill narcotic prescriptions," said April Hughes, Northern Health's health services administrator for Lakes-Omenica.
The outpatient clinic in Fort St. James remains open and is trying to deal with follow-up visits to allow patients to receive minor procedures, intravenous medications, or have stitches or casts removed. Paul Stent, the only remaining Fort St. James doctor, is offering a prescription clinic at his Fort St. James office from 1 to 5 p.m. on Wednesdays and also books same-day appointments.
Northern Health has hired a consultant to examine how to improve health-care delivery at the Fort St. James clinic, which is owned by Stent. One option would be to have Northern Health take over management of the clinic. The other model being considered would be to turn the operation over to a local service group.
"That would give us an option, with our additional resources, to assist the community with long-term physician recruitment and retention," said Hughes. "A lot of the newer graduates coming into family practice are less interested in running the business of a private family practice and more interested in service in the job they're trained for."
Stent first proposed the idea of Northern Health taking over the fee-for-service clinic in 2007. He recently worked out an agreement with Northern Health to make his job at the clinic a salaried position. The new arrangement, which takes effect in April, will allow him to take time off and not leave him on the hook for the expenses of running the clinic.
Under the previous arrangement, if a locum could not be found to fill in while he was away, he and the other doctors at the clinic would have to pay the lease, utilities, staff salaries and any equipment costs. Stent's medical clinic has space for four doctors and he's the only one left.
"It's pretty stressful, I'm not doing any emergency calls at the hospital, and I'm just working out of the clinic," said Stent, 63. "I've imposed a limit and I'm now seeing 30 or less patients a day, because there's a huge amount of paperwork involved.
"We're doing our best to try to recruit and I'm hanging in here as long as I find myself able to. I'm definitely thinking about scaling back and maybe working half-time and it was my plan to do that this year or next year. I might be pushed to do that sooner than I thought."
Kevin Crook, chief administrative officer of the Fort St. James municipal council, said the town has depended on South African doctors for as long as he can remember. Now, with that source of medical expertise no longer available, with no immediate solution identified, he's worried about how the town will cope.
"For the most part we're doing OK, I haven't heard of any real horror stories, but I know people have had to go to the emergency department in Vanderhoof (a 35-minute drive from Fort St. James)," said Crook. "Getting an appointment with our one doctor is difficult because those appointments fill up [in five minutes] every morning. I know people are frustrated.
