Closing hospital beds no way to improve health services in Fraser Health region

Fraser Health Authority is closing 80 hospital beds.

In a health region whose population is growing faster than any other in the province, where waits at emergency rooms are by far the longest, and waits for surgery are often longer than in any other region, this makes absolutely no sense.

FHA says it wants to move some care into the community, either at community care facilities or at home. More than 400 residential beds are being opened in the Fraser Valley, with 75 of those at Elim Village in Fleetwood and 92 at Evergreen Campus in White Rock. It also plans to open 10 new hospice beds.

The fact that many more community care beds, hospice beds and facilities are opening is good news. People are living longer, and many have advanced care needs. They need regular care, and clearly an acute care hospital isn’t the best place to provide that type of service.

However, simultaneously cutting hospital beds makes no sense at all. Most hospitals in the FHA, particularly in fast-growing areas like Surrey, White Rock, Langley, Abbotsford, Maple Ridge and Port Moody, are significantly overcrowded now. All are facing bed closures. The closure of 80 beds marks a loss of almost three per cent of the region’s 3,000 hospital beds.

Surrey-Green Timbers NDP MLA Sue Hammell pointed out that Surrey Memorial Hospital is already 89 patients over capacity. She also noted that FHA gets the lowest per capita finding of any health region in the province.

Two moves by the provincial government in last week’s budget draw more attention to just how badly served residents of the Fraser region are, when it comes to health services. The province is reducing Medical Service Plan premiums for some, but boosting them for many others. Couples (who make $42,000 per year or more) will be paying $156 per month starting next January, up $20 from this year’s rates. MSP premiums have risen by more than 40 per cent since 2009.

Are residents of the FHA region, who are about to lose medical services, going to get a rebate instead?

The other provincial move is to take the property purchase tax off new homes valued at $750,000 or more, in the name of making it easier to buy a home. This comes amid great political pressure about the skyrocketing cost of housing, particularly in Vancouver.

The net effect of this move will be a rush of buyers into many areas of the FHA, notably Surrey, Langley and Maple Ridge, where there are a significant number of new homes available for under $750,000. Such is not the case in Vancouver. This rush of new residents means even more pressure on FHA facilities, about to have fewer open hospital beds, and longer waits at ERs.

The provincial government is not doing any favours for this region. In addition to this cut in health services, it is planning a new toll bridge which will put even more pressure on the Alex Fraser and Pattullo Bridges. It is doing nothing to add transit service south of the Fraser. It is very slow to approve new schools and additions, despite more crowding in Surrey schools than anywhere else in the province.

In the area of health services, Fraser Health Authority has long been underserved. As most of the referral hospitals are located in Vancouver, many FHA patients do get treatment there. However, that is no reason to close any hospital beds in a region that is growing so quickly, has a large proportion of children and a growing number of seniors.

The South Fraser region cannot continue to take in thousands of new residents each month without some serious attention to all these issues, yet little is being done to significantly address these challenges.