Equipping an operating room in the new Lakes District Hospital & Health Centre could cost several million dollars, but even if local residents can raise the required funds, it likely won’t be enough to bring surgical services back to Burns Lake in the near future.
Jonathon Dyck, Northern Health’s public affairs and media relations lead, said last week that equipping an operating room is the least significant hurdle to be cleared before surgical services can be offered in small communities.
“Establishing operating room services is a long process and takes strong commitment from local physicians and staff to ensure they’re sustainable,” said Dyck. “The first step is not providing equipment for the operating room, it’s keeping a strong, reliable, and sustainable primary care base. What that means is getting those three to five physicians that the community plan calls for who can operate within a community. Without that basic service, there is nothing to provide other services, or the necessary capacity to develop extra services like an operating room.”
Dyck said that to provide surgical services safely and sustainably, a community needs a minimum of three to five General Practitioner (GP) surgeons and an equal number of GP anaesthetists. These physicians, he stressed, are in addition to the four or five doctors required to provide effective on-call coverage.
Communities hoping to offer surgical services also need qualified Operating Room (OR) nurses. At present, he said, none of the nurses at the Lakes District Hospital & Health Centre possess these qualifications.
Local residents who support equipping an operating room in the Lakes District hospital suggest it would help with physician recruitment. The St. John Hospital in Vanderhoof, they say, is an example of what a small community with a fully-functional OR can achieve.
While this may be the case, Dyck notes that other communities without surgical facilities have been successful in recruiting skilled doctors.
“There are communities that don’t have ORs that have been very successful in recruiting physicians,” he stressed. “Fort St. James is a community very close to Burns Lake. They were down to one GP in that community, and they were able to recruit three and a half more within a fairly short time period. One of the reasons that was successful was the strong community partnerships that came together in that recruitment effort.”
Dyck noted that Northern Health works on a regional model. Not all services, he said, are offered in all communities.
“With 24 hospitals in the region, it’s not feasible to have surgical sites at all of them,” he stated.
While Northern Health doesn’t believe it’s possible to establish surgical services in Burns Lake at this time, Dyck said the health authority hasn’t ruled out doing so in the future.
“Northern Health has a good relationship with the municipality and the regional hospital district, and we’re working in collaboration to recruit the physicians that we currently need to the community,” he said. “As has been said in the past, there is a procedure room (in the new hospital) large enough to create an operating room in the future. So if there is an opportunity to do that, we would look at that in the future.”
Two local residents have been circulating a petition that calls on the Village of Burns Lake to earmark a $960,000 donation from Comfor Management Services Ltd. for use in equipping an operating room in the new hospital.
The petition has garnered widespread support, and will be submitted to village council in the near future.