Despite no longer being a practicing physician, Dr Charles Helm is not taking the announcement of the closure of the Emergency Room on evenings and weekends lying down.
Helm spoke to the crowd at the rally for Emergency Services, he spoke before the Northern Health meeting on September 7, he attended the meeting on September 11 and once again spoke to people who attended an open house hosted by Larry Neufeld on September 12.
He says he’s been here for 33 years, and he has been through this before. “Northern Health has tried to shut down after our emergency services in the past,” he says. “We’ve always managed to push back, and I really hope that we can manage to push back again.”
He says the relationship with Northern Health feels very adversarial right now. “I like collaborating, not being in a situation like this.”
He says he was blindsided by this. “Our mayor was blindsided by this. There are things that have happened that are not good. We need to acknowledge that, but we also need to try and rise above that and try to be constructive. We don’t want to be secretive. We want to be open with our agenda. We don’t want hidden agendas here. But what puzzles me is that this announcement was simply made without consulting the many, many friends that Northern Health has who are trying really, really hard to address the situation we have here, which is a crisis situation, make no mistake.”
Helm says he is grateful for council’s strong leadership. “The statement that the mayor came out with was incredibly powerful. It used the word ‘condemn,’ which is the strongest word I’ve ever seen in a statement like this. Well done, I say. Good job. That’s exactly what we need. You folks are showing us leadership when we need it most. And I really appreciate that.”
Helm says, while he is no longer actively practicing, he is the co-chair of the South Peace Division of Family Practice, and was not informed about this.
He says he and his colleagues are working hard to get doctors to come here, not just to Tumbler Ridge, but to the Northeast. “Our division of family practice has got funding from the Peace River Regional District. There is another ally to do recruitment, to deal with situations just like this. We’re actually using those funds from the Peace River Regional District to go to Ireland and England in November specifically to job fairs to recruit for places like Tumbler Ridge, not just Tumbler Ridge, but for Chetwynd and Dawson Creek, which also have problems. That’s how we’re spending our funds. That’s called innovation. That’s what we’re trying to do. I’m also the co-chair of the primary Care Network with Kendra Kiss from Northern Health. Something like 21 new net positions have been created by the government for the South Peace. Many, if not most, of those are doctors who could work in a place like Tumbler Ridge. We’re just beginning to post those positions, and please wish us luck in getting that.”
He says technology is changing how care is offered in emergency departments. “We now have things like real time virtual support. This is using technology to provide virtual care, including in the emergency room. It’s being done in Dawson Creek, to prevent Dawson Creek going on diversion. These are the sort of things that my buddies in the rural coordination centre of BC do. Why was I not approached? Why was I not asking to speak with them and see what could be done?”
“And then there’s the hybrid care model. We have federal funding, and we have very competent doctors and colleagues within Northern BC, who are putting forward Tumbler Ridge as a pilot project to make hybrid care work and that could either be in the clinic or it could be in the emergency room, could be either. But either way, it would add 1.0 FTE (Full Time Equivalent) to our complement of physicians. I’m working with them the moment I heard about this, I said, ‘this is amazing. Let’s jump on this. Let’s see how it can help us.’”
But despite the promise, says Helm, the program does not seem to be making much headway. “They tell me they have not had a response from Northern Health despite many requests. Northern Health needs to respond to things like this, because otherwise, we have to ask: what is the agenda? The other thing I can think of is that across Northern BC, there are very remote nursing stations. There are no doctors, they just have nurses, often working one and two, alternating calls, but they provide 24/7 coverage. I’m thinking, for example, of Takla Landing, where a friend of mine was working. How can those communities can have 24/7 after hours availability for their emergencies and a place of 2,500 people cannot. It doesn’t make sense to me.”
He says at the most recent Tumbler Ridge Medical Conference, there was a record number of physicians and allied health professionals attending. “92, to be precise. It was an incredible success,” says Helm. “People came to me afterwards, and said, ‘You have done more in a weekend than Northern Health has done in a decade for recruitment.’ What I will tell you that there was no one from Northern Health there. despite invitations. There was nobody from senior Northern Health management present. So to me, it’s sometimes as if we’re working in parallel universes. and we’re not communicating. And I say we need to collaborate. I’m a collaborator. We need to communicate. We don’t want to blindside each other with things like this.”
He says once an announcement like this goes out, it’s hard to get back what has been taken away. “We have suffered death by a thousand cuts in Tumbler Ridge over the last 30 years, thousands of little things. Now, this one is a big one. Make no mistake. This is the big one. And if we lose this battle, we’ve lost our community, to put it blankly. I look around here, and I see people who are alive and with us today because of the way we operated our emergency room in the past. Not just the people who are here, but their family members as well. I think if we lose our emergency room care after hours, and on weekends, which of us will not make it?
“People will die because of this. We have a community of 2,500 people with mountain roads. We have a long winter. Sometimes it’s impossible to get out and people will die.
“And how do you think this will look at the division level, when we are trying so hard to recruit? We’re going to go to Ireland in the UK. Do you think I can sell it to people when I say it to them, you’re going to work 8 to 5, 8 to 7? You can’t service your community as you want to. The way I fought back against Northern Health every other time this happened was to say, ‘I’m a family doctor, I want to serve Tumbler Ridge in its entirety, not just from nine to five.
“I do want to ask a question that I think we need to hear from the Northern Health contingent today, and that is this: we understand you’ve got a crisis. You’re facing a crisis. We understand you need to try and do something, we understand, you cannot make doctors materialize overnight. Although I know of a doctor who would move here within a week or two. That would change things, I hope. But what I want is the assurance from Northern Health that when those numbers come back, our emergency room after our care comes back with it. Otherwise, we are lost.
“If I get told that this is temporary and as soon as the numbers come back, we’re back to business as usual. That’s when I can recruit doctors elsewhere to come to Tumbler Ridge. Without that, I’m wasting my time. So the question is, what will it take to bring emergency after hour services back to Tumbler Ridge?”
A few days later, Northern Health put out a statement that the closure would indeed be temporary.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
