SURREY, B.C. — British Columbia politicians are celebrating connecting more people with family doctors, but it comes as emergency room physicians at Surrey Memorial Hospital say conditions there continue to crumble.
A letter sent to the president of Fraser Health Authority Dr. Victoria Lee, and published online, warns that deteriorating conditions in the department are "unequivocally leading to substandard care" and creating an "increasingly toxic work environment." The letter calls for "new leadership," saying wait times in the ER often exceed 12 hours and the rate of patients who leave the department without being seen has tripled to 8.
4 per cent since 2020-2021. Premier David Eby and Health Minister Adrian Dix were in Surrey, where a new hospital is being built, to announce that more than 248,000 people have been connected to a family doctor or nurse practitioner since a provincial registry was launched in July 2023. Eby says the province is working on addressing health-care pressures by building the second hospital in Surrey and connecting more people with family doctors to reduce the need for them to go to the emergency room.
A statement from Fraser Health says it understands the seriousness of the concerns and it will be responding directly to the physicians "to address them comprehensively." "While we have more work to do, we are pleased to report that in addition to the thousands of staff already working at the hospital, since July 2023 we posted 575 net new positio.