Hospital. The catchment number is
based on local population figures
(for municipal hospitals) which are
inserted in a formula that figures
_ out, according to age and sex, the
number of people who might
actually need to be hospitalized.

In the case of Mills Memorial,
the population figure used to cal-
culate the "catchment" is just over.
17,000, a. number that ignores the
regional nature of the Terrace
hospital. Mills Memorial has on
staff 13 medical specialists who
routinely treat patients from Hous-
ton to the Queen Charlottes Islands
and from Hartley Bay to the
Yukon, an area with a population
much closer to 100,000 than
17,000.

Population figures and a list of
services provided should be the
only arguments. Mills Memorial
needs to convince the ministry

they need regional funding. But
ministry bureaucrats don't see it
that way. According to MLA Dave
Parker, politicians, including

Strachan, understand the Mills
Memorial argument, but key Min-
istry of Health bureaucrats don’t.
Mired in tons of statistics, data and
funding formulae, the bureaucrats
refuse to budge. Mills Memorial,
they say, is a municipal hospital
and is already getting all the
money it needs. oe

Terrace city council disagrees
with the bureaucrats as well. A
motion made by alderman Mo
“Takhar at a July 15 meeting
received unanimous support. The
city will be writing a letter to
Parker, Strachan and premier Rita
Johnston pointing out that with the
closure of 24 beds there are going
to be a lot more patients flown to
Vancouver, costing the government
more ‘than it would to maintain
services here.

Another motion by alderman
Danny Sheridan was backed 100
percent. The number of out-of-
town people who do business here
is an accurate indicator of the
importance of Terrace as a
regional centre. Sheridan says this
number is linked to the need for
regional health care services here
and the city is going to try to
measure more accurately the num-
ber of people who visit Terrace on
a regular basis.

And alderman Darryl Laurent
noted during council’s Monday
night meeting that the first patient
to visit Terrace’s nuclear medicine
facility travelled here from Prince
George. To Laurent, that fact

demonstrates very clearly the value
of what has been created at Mills
Memorial Hospital... And what the
region is in danger of losing.
Using data gathered from local
professional sources the Terrace
Review entered the data into a
spreadsheet to find out if Victoria
is right in calculating that Mills
Memorial doesn’t need another
half-million dollars to survive.
According to our spreadsheet, the
bureaucrats are wrong. Mills Mem-
orial does need more money in
order to maintain the current level
of service. Perhaps even more than
a half million dollars.
The figures showed that if the
left hand of the ministry saves
money by not paying for a regional

A16 Terrace Review — Wednesday, July 17, 1991

H OS PIT AL — “ : Apes

from paye'Al

service, the right hand will be
shelling out about twice as much —
as the money saved by providing
those services in Vancouver.
Before we look at the moncy.

aspect, though, we should try to fu
-an avetage day, 28 of the-30 beds

determine how many beds Mills
Memorial really needs, and who

‘they should be maintaining those

‘beds for. Before it was decided to
close 24 beds in order to balance
the Mills budget with Victoria's
financial concept, it might have
been argued the hospital should
close a few beds anyway. But the
argument would have zeroed in on
beds in the psychiatric and pedi-
atric wards, not on the surgical
floor.

In pediatrics last year, there were
22, beds but on an average day
only nine were being used. On the
busiest day in 1990, 19 beds were
in use and on the quietest there
were no patients at all. So how
many -beds should there be in
pediatrics? It depends on who you
talk to.

Ten beds have been closed in this
ward, meaning there are 12 avail-
able. We tried taking the average
of nine patients per day and adding
a 10 percent safety factor. That
formula said there should be 10
beds in the ward, but obviously on
a busy day they would have to be
double bunks. |

A number somewhere between
15 or 20 might be far more realis-
tic, 12 seems a little short. Too
often, children who should be in
Mills Memorial would either be at
home or in Vancouver. The only
thing Mills Memorial might do if
they’re busy is say "No" to non-
resident patients and let outlying
communities fend for themselves.
That day in 1990 when 19 children
were in the award, if everything
else was average, only 12 of them
would have been from Terrace.

_ The psychiatric ward had 16 beds
before cuts were made, Now there
12 available. The situation here is
similar to pediatrics; the ward was
never filled to capacity last year.
There were 15 patients in the
psych ward on the busiest day last
year and only four on the quictest
day of the year. Going through the
same process as we did with pedi-
atrics, maintalning something like
12 or 13 beds might be in order.
But then comes the medical-

Dave Parker ©
MLA for Skeena

635-4215

surgical floor. Here, Mills Memor-
ial is at the edge. They need every

one:.of. the 30. beds. that existed -

before the bed closure .announce-

meént,: and. it probably. wouldn't |

hurt if they hada couple more. On

are full. On the quietest day last
year only 11 beds-were being used,
but the highest occupancy rate in
1990 saw 34 patients somehow
confined to the 30 beds.

‘With the recent bed closures,
though, only 20 beds are available.
How will Mills Memorial cope?
The ratio of resident to non-resi-
dent patients in Mills Memorial is

roughly 2:1. This means that if -

Mills staff say "no" to non-resident
patients there will be enough beds
for Terrace residents. But Mills
Memorial can’t do that.

There’s a reason one of every
three patients is from out of town,
the 13 medical specialists on staff.
Keep the non-resident patients out,
and there’s a good chance many of
those specialists will leave because
their practices would decline. So
there may only be one answer.

Seven Terrace residents on any’

given day, will either be sitting at
home waiting for elective surgery
or in Vancouver receiving emerg-
ency treatment. If the necessary
money can’t be found, there may
be no other choice. Keep in mind,
though, the patient is billed $246

to be flown by air ambulance to
Vancouver... And, if necessary,
another $246 to be flown back. -

But for all the inconvenience,

‘expense and lack of needed sup-

port-from family and friends that
occurs when it is necessary to
travel south for medical care, what
is going to happen to the minis-
try’s financial picture?

There will be a lot of smiling

faces around one table in Victoria.
According to our spreadsheet the
ministry would have had to shell
out $881,779 to maintain the extra
10 beds on the medical/surgical.
floor.

Those responsible for funding the
medevac system will be scratching
there heads and perhaps wondering
how they might cut costs. Sudden-
ly they’re getting two more
medevacs out of the Northwest and
it’s costing them $2,162,625 a
year. And those responsible for

administering the Medical Services

Plan will want to know why
they’re having to pay an exira
$252,306 every year, because a
day’s stay in Mills Memarial is
only $380 compared to $730 in
Vancouver General.

At the same time, of course,
there will be about 730 Northwest
residents who want to know why
they were forced to pay a total of
about $300,000 to $400,000 out of
their own pockets. That was their

share of the medevac costs and

they're not going to be happy.
We asked Skeena MLA Dave

Parker if our spreadsheet looked

- reasonably accurate. He agreed that

it seemed realistic and paralleled

his own expectations if the situ-

ation at Mills Memorial is not
addressed. _

But Parker made a few additional
observations. It’s obvious that the
Ministry ‘of Health must come up —
with the funding, but there are
others who have to do a few things
as well. Financial administration at
Mills Memorial could be better,
says Parker.

The quality of their efforts is
above average in the province but
there is still some fine-tuning and
cost-cutting that can be done. He
says hospital administration has
made some progress here, and
perhaps that’s the difference
between their estimate of $500,000
and ours of about $882,000 to
maintain a regional service here.

Medical specialists have to stop
using emergency as their weekend
office. If they want to provide a
regional service they should be
working Saturdays in a clinic. And
ihe general public shouldn’t use
ambulances and the Mills Memor-
ial emergency room for non-emer-
gency purposes. Not everyone
does, says Parker, but too many
do.

‘REE
1
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