Interior Health (IH) has pulled the plug on the Dialysis Unit at the Invermere and District Hospital.

While the move is creating upheaval for Golden and Columbia Valley residents requiring treatment, it has also become a hot button issue politically.

District of Invermere Mayor Gerry Taft says the closure will impact the Columbia Valley economy and create another crack for rural residents to fall through.

And in the arena where provincial legislation lives and dies, it has become a battlefield in terms of the upcoming provincial election (May 14).

Columbia River-Revelstoke MLA Norm Macdonald says the cut in service could have been avoided if the BC Liberals weren’t spending so much taxpayer money on “partisan ads.

“At the same time that the BC Liberals are choosing to spend $15 million on taxpayer-funded partisan ads, they are telling local residents that there is no money to provide dialysis services to residents of Golden and the Columbia Valley,” stated Macdonald in a press release.

The Invermere Dialysis Unit, which was originally temporarily closed, will not be re-opened and dialysis patients who have been accommodating the closure on a short-term basis are crying foul, the release noted.

“We have heard from numerous residents who have been affected by this closure,” said Macdonald.  “Many people in this area will be forced to travel vast distances for dialysis services a number of times every week.  It’s simply not acceptable for even more services to be removed from this area.”

Macdonald’s chief opponent in the upcoming election, Liberal candidate Doug Clovechok, said the decision to close the Invermere Dialysis Unit wasn’t made lightly and Macdonald’s press release “does not represent the true facts.

“Decisions regarding the cessation of any medical service do not lie with government but with Health Care management officials and are made with greatest of consideration,” he said, adding,  “The management of health care service delivery was put into the hands of professionally-trained experts by the BC Liberal government many years ago, simply because politicians have no business in the business of making health care management decisions.”

Clovechok suggested the system has been working well and “continues to be responsive to ever changing health care needs. Today, B.C. has the best health outcomes in Canada in many key categories like joint replacement, cardiac and cancer care resulting in the healthiest people in Canada.  This management model continues to ensure precious health care dollars are used in a way that brings the greatest return to British Columbian patients and their families.

“The truthful fact is that total spending on health care in this province has increased by 92 per cent since 2001 from $9.4 billion to $18 billion this year and funding for Health Authorities will be increased by $1.1 billion over the next three years,” Clovechok stated, adding, “That said there are still cost pressures, which is why the health authorities and government are working to streamline services, increase health promotions and find savings and efficiencies to improve health care for today and tomorrow. The BC Liberals take you and your families’ health care issues very seriously and we continue to work hard to ensure that BC’s health care system is sustainable so it will be there for our children and our grandchildren.”

Macdonald says the Liberal Government is incompetent when it comes to putting the needs of people first.

“It’s hard to take the government claim that there is simply no money to provide this necessary service when government is currently spending millions on advertising with the sole purpose to try to convince you to vote for them in May,” he said.

Beyond the provincial corridors and on the ground in Invermere, second-term Mayor Taft says the cuts to the service will be unduly burdensome to valley dialysis patients.

“I think it is very unfortunate that IHA has decided to permanently close the dialysis unit in Invermere.  My understanding is that some Columbia Valley residents will now have to continue to travel to Trail on a weekly basis for life dependent treatment, and instead of this being a temporary reality – this is now forever.  I also understand that when he had a functional dialysis unit in Invermere, it actually attracted and allowed visitors needing the service to come to our region, and that it was an income generator for IHA, as well as bring additional visitors and economic activity to the area.  It is unfortunate that in health care we must fight to maintain or at least manage the decrease in services in rural areas,” said Taft, who is also Invermere’s representative on the Kootenay East Regional Hospital District board.

“Regionalization and homecare may sound great on paper, but unfortunately many people fall through the cracks,” he concluded.

Ian Cobb/e-KNOW

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