Avoiding the Elephants in the Room Pt. 3

Killing Healthcare in Rural BC

1. Institutional Malpractice

With our community emergency ward and diagnostic lab still on vastly reduced hours, local politicians are frustrated by what they describe as the “continued stonewalling” of Interior Health officials. New Denver Mayor Leonard Casley has taken to the media, giving multiple interviews on TV and radio to express frustration over the reduction of the ER to 12 hours per day and diagnostic lab hours to three half days per week. Staff shortages are plaguing medical facilities across the province, in part due to the firing of 2,500 healthcare workers who refused ‘mandatory’ Covid-19 vaccinations, [1] despite court actions brought against BC’s Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry challenging the legality of the mandate. [2]

A coalition of healthcare professionals, Hire Back Our Heroes, [3] is demanding that they be rehired so they may get back to the business of saving lives and supporting community healthcare in a time of crisis. The US CDC announced on August 12 that they were suspending Covid-19 protocols, yet Dr. Henry has refused to back down, stating merely “our path is our path.” [4] Her maternalistic condescension is insulting—no scientific reasons were given for her decision. Does she think we’re all children? “Mommy says you have to stay in your room.” “Why?” “Because I say so. End of discussion.” As Dr. Paul Alexander puts it: “British Columbia (BC) is the only province in Canada that has not dropped the vaccine mandates for healthcare workers, and BC insiders have reached out to me advising that the health system is collapsing fast.” [5] Dr. Alexander particularly singles out Interior Health for its “corruption” and being “out of line with core science.” Instead of bowing to the growing mountain of evidence proving none of the Covid-19 protocols work, [6] Dr. Henry is willing to preside over the closure or reduction of entire healthcare departments in rural communities.

A beach on the north end of Slocan Lake near Hills, BC similar to the one at New Denver just 16 km. (about 8 miles) south. Photo Sean Arthur Joyce

2. It Takes a Village

Her arrogance is felt all the way down to village level in this province, and may only be equaled by the arrogance of Interior Health executives. New Denver councilor Colin Moss, who is also vice-president of the BC Rural Health Network—Mayor Casley is also on the board—says they are getting “fed up”:

“We need true community and municipal input in local healthcare decisions. At present there’s absolutely no community input. It’s the same old problem, urban centric decisions determining rural healthcare. And we’re tired of it. Our village council is tired of it and the Slocan Valley is tired of it.”

As an example of the lack of good faith in negotiations with the village, Moss says when Interior Health announced the ER reduction from 24/7 to 8 am to 8 pm 7 days a week, staff was not notified. They only found out when they went to work that day. “How’s that for respect and consideration for your staff? And this has been going on for years and years – it’s another thing we’re absolutely fed up with.” Further, he notes that during a previous reduction of service in January this year, when the ER hours were restored to 24/7, the Interior Health website was not updated:

“So what’s that going to do to healthcare workers interested in working here? Is that by incompetence or by design, that they haven’t updated their website? Here again, something that’s unacceptable. A huge entity like IH should be able to run their communications better than that.”

Mayor Casley has been pointing out in media interviews that closing down rural healthcare facilities is ultimately pointless because patients then must seek care in urban hospitals, placing more pressure on those facilities. As Moss explains:

“Physicians from larger urban hospitals are now seeing our side, because the closure of rural facilities is only putting more pressure on them. As Leonard has been saying in interviews, it’s a matter of simple math. Where do they think patients from New Denver are going to go? They’re going to go to Nakusp, [7] and it just keeps going further down the line.”   

Moss says one of the first things he and Mayor Casley did after their election was to help form a Slocan Valley health committee that united valley healthcare concerns into one voice. Included in their discussions are the RDCK Area H representative Walter Popoff and the Slocan Valley Chamber of Commerce health committee. A key bone of contention has been the way Interior Health bureaucrats determine the allocation of resources based on total catchment area. The committee insists that the New Denver clinic’s catchment area represents 3,000 valley residents, some coming from as far south as Slocan Park for treatment.

“The designation of catchment areas isn’t working,” says Moss. “Patient statistics south of Silverton and Red Mountain are included with Nelson, even though it’s still the Arrow Lakes local health area or catchment. We’ve caught them doing this before; it’s just one more area of erroneous statistical interpretation. This has been a problem for many years.”

The BC Rural Health Network (BCHRN), a coalition of rural communities and incorporated municipalities, is seeking a resolution to this ongoing communication problem with Interior Health as a means of restoring better rural healthcare and emergency services. The BCHRN has recently received charitable status, allowing them to pursue more avenues of funding. Its membership is continually growing as more and more rural communities face cutbacks like New Denver’s. “We have more than a few municipal members which gives us some clout,” says Moss, “because when a mayor calls they tend to pick up the phone, whereas if it’s just a concerned community group, that doesn’t always happen.”

Another ongoing problem has been Interior Health’s unwillingness to offer physicians long-term contracts at the New Denver clinic. This has cost the community more than one doctor who would happily have settled here if only they had the security of a long-term contract. Instead, physicians are typically offered only a one-year contract.

“We want them to have three or five-year contracts; by we I mean us and the physicians. Because offering one-year contracts tells staff and healthcare workers that IH is not serious about keeping this clinic open. Negotiating a one-year contract with physicians is negotiating in bad faith.”

Commenting on the CDC decision last Friday, Dr. Chris Martenson noted with alarm the 1.3 million reports of injuries in the US Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS): “All along the way, I have been saying the same thing as Drs. McCullough, Malone, Urso, Kory, Marik, Rose, and Steve Kirsch among many others; the Covid vaccines should never have been put into every possible person.” [8] The failure of the CDC and other medical authorities around the world to heed the mounting data proving that both the pandemic protocols and the experimental injections were misguided at best, criminally negligent at worst, signals the end of public trust in these authorities, says Dr. Martenson.

“They care more about money, control, and power than they do anything else. That is my firm and blunt assessment. These people cannot be reformed. They are damaged goods. The institutions cannot be reformed—they must be dismantled and begun anew. The corporations cannot be salvaged, they must be disincorporated and their stock and bondholders made to suffer great losses so that next time capital asks a few more questions.” [9]

Colin Moss agrees with Dr. Martenson’s assessment of health authorities, particularly given the poor track record of Interior Health:

“It’s become obvious to me that the health authority model isn’t working. They’re either unable or unwilling or both to provide the level of healthcare we need here in the Slocan Valley. They have no conception of life in a small, semi-remote town. They have no clue how to listen to small rural communities or how to implement their ideas. Healthcare is a cornerstone of a small community and its economy; it’s far more than health, it’s business attraction and retention. They bear a responsibility to us that they are not fulfilling and haven’t for some time. Whether by design or incompetence, it’s simply not working. So let’s get past why it’s not working and create a new model.”

Or, possibly even better yet—an old model that had already proven itself decades ago. As I noted in my previous article, “Avoiding the Elephants in the Room Part 1,” [10] this community had successfully operated its hospital with a local volunteer board for many years prior to the institution of regional health authorities in 2002. Moss notes how his wife when she worked in reception at the New Denver clinic counted 22 managers above her level, most of whom she had never met or even seen. He points out that Interior Health seems to have had it in for rural clinics and hospitals from the beginning—only a year after its formation, IH made its first attempt to close the New Denver clinic. As I noted previously, this provided the inspiration for my novel, Mountain Blues, a fictional celebration of how the community rallied to save its hospital. 

“I’m sure we could do at least as good a job of running our facility as we used to do. But in order to have that work, the health ministry would have to buy into it and provide the funding. We’ve got a long way to build back up, so they’d have to provide the funding to make it work. We in New Denver are willing to be a test case.”

NEXT: We await a response to questions submitted to Interior Health regarding the New Denver service reductions.  

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[1] Isaac Teo, “Nearly 2,500 BC Health-Care Workers Fired for Not Getting COVID-19 Shots,” Epoch Times, March 23, 2022: https://www.theepochtimes.com/nearly-2500-bc-health-care-workers-fired-for-refusing-covid-19-shots_4357010.html

[2] Jeremy Hainsworth, “Dr. Bonnie Henry faces yet another pandemic-related court challenge,” Glacier Media/Castanet, December 6, 2021: https://www.castanet.net/news/BC/353816/Dr-Bonnie-Henry-faces-yet-another-pandemic-related-court-challenge

[3] Hire Back Our Heroes website and video: https://www.freedomtochoose.ca/hire-back-our-heroes/

[4] Simon Little, “B.C. to stay the course as U.S. CDC relaxes COVID guidelines: Health minister,” Global News, August 12, 2022: https://globalnews.ca/news/9057564/bc-covid-guidelines-cdc-change/

[5] Dr. Paul Alexander, “Earth to British Columbia (BC), earth calling BC, can you read me? B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix & Dr. Bonnie Henry, can you get your heads out of your *ss & read the science? You two make no sense!” Substack, August 15, 2022:

Earth to British Columbia (BC), earth calling BC, can you read me? B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix & Dr. Bonnie Henry, can you get your heads out of your *ss & read the science? You two make no sense!

[6] John Johnson, Denis Rancourt, “Evaluating the Effect of Lockdowns On All-Cause Mortality During the COVID Era: Lockdowns Did Not Save Lives,” ResearchGate, July 2022: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361877928_Evaluating_the_Effect_of_Lockdowns_On_All-Cause_Mortality_During_the_COVID_Era_Lockdowns_Did_Not_Save_Lives NOTE: This is just the latest of several studies reaching similar conclusions. SEE ALSO: Douglas Allen, “Covid-19 Lockdown Cost/Benefits: A Critical Assessment of the Literature,” Taylor-Francis Online, September 29, 2021: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13571516.2021.1976051?journalCode=cijb20

[7] A village 46 km. (28.5 miles) to the northwest of New Denver with its own small hospital.

[8] Dr. Chris Martenson, “WOW!!! CDC Completely Reverses Course. IT’S OVER!” Peak Prosperity, August 12, 2022:https://peakprosperity.com/wow-cdc-completely-reverses-course-its-over/

[9] Dr. Chris Martenson, “WOW!!! CDC Completely Reverses Course. IT’S OVER!” Peak Prosperity, August 12, 2022, ibid.

[10]

Avoiding the Elephants in the Room Pt.1