Editor:
As the lead physician on the Residential Care Committee of the Sunshine Coast Division of Family Practice, I wish to advise your readers that we support the urgent implementation of the contract signed by the Trellis Group with Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) for the building of the Silverstone long-term care facility. This build will replace two aging structures with a new state-of-the-art facility and will give our community 20 additional beds. Although 20 is far short of our new bed requirements, it is a badly needed start toward meeting our needs.
We also support the staff at Totem and Shorncliffe in their quest for fairness in wages and benefits and seniority recognition in transitioning to a new employer in a new facility.
Moving forward, VCH has acknowledged our additional needs and has committed to an open collaborative process to explore potential solutions, including increased funding for homecare services, future expansions to Silverstone and the possibility of creating a dementia facility at a refurbished Shorncliffe complex.
The shortage of long-term care beds in our community has resulted in chronic overcrowding at Sechelt Hospital.
Our occupancy rate of 128 per cent is the highest of any facility in the VCH authority. Patients are doubled up in single rooms, treated in alcoves and kept inappropriately on stretchers in the emergency room. Amid such overcrowding, standards of care will suffer, disease transmission is facilitated, staff and patient morale declines, and patient care is compromised.
Those 20 new beds in the Silverstone facility are desperately needed. Time is of the essence if we are to prevent a true crisis situation at our hospital. We call on Sechelt council to facilitate the rapid implementation of this project.
Dr. Jim Petzold, Roberts Creek
