April 15, 2005

Backroom Health Politics and Secrecy

"We are attempting to avoid negative media coverage in the pre-election period, and the issue of LTC is particularly sensitive to the MOH."
April 12, 2005 email from PHC Vice President Medical Affairs, Dr. Jeremy Etherington

Emergency room physician Dr. Karen Wanger gave an interview to CBC radio in which she criticized the lack of long term care beds and the impact that has on the emergency room. That issue has been well canvassed and will remain a hot topic throughout the election campaign. The Campbell government broke one of its main election promises. It tries to wiggle off the hook by claiming that it needed to upgrade 30 year old facilities, but Katherine Whittred, the former Minister of State for Community Care, in an April 22, 2002 submission to a staged cabinet meeting said that funds would be reallocated from residential care to assisted living. Three years ago the Campbell government approved plans to break its election promise of "5,000 new intermediate and long term care beds by 2006."

Dr. Etherington's email said "we must get the message to physicians that they should not be doing media without the involvement of our communcations team, unless they do this as private citizens and IN NO WAY identify themselves as PHC physicians (emphasis in the original)." Apparently a personal chat with Wanger was considered insufficient, so an email was sent to enough people that it leaked to the CBC. It is hard to say which physician did the most to help expose problems with the health policies and secrecy of the Campbell government.

Eatherington's email supported the story that NDP candidate Tim Stevenson raised on April 12th regarding plans by Providence Health Care (PHC) to move the hospital. Hetherington wrote: "We are presently in the situation where SLT members are meeting with Penny Ballem and Colin Hansen at 10:45 this morning to gather support for Legacy and we can now anticipate an irritated reception from them due to bad press attributed to PHC. It is absolutely essential that we get a green light on the Legacy Project, and this is not the way to achieve it." Do those words mean that hospital staff are expected to play politics and keep information from the public in order to protect a government that might punish those who tell the truth? Etherington's email probably contributed to Hansen confirming that Providence Health Care officials are pressuring the provincial government to close the downtown location of St. Paul's hospital and move it to False Creek. There is nothing Dr. Wanger said in her interview with CBC that would have exposed the backroom politics surrounding the future of St. Paul's. From his involvement in the issue, it appears that Collin Hansen is still playing Health Minister while his colleague Shirley Bond campaigns to save her Prince George seat.