Waiting for the hospital

by Ian Elliot
Northern News Services

INUVIK (Jan 19/98) - Much of the future of health care in Inuvik -- ranging from quality of care issues to the number of nurses and doctors willing to live and work there -- hinges on a new hospital being built.

Ray Scott, the chief executive officer of the Inuvik Regional Health and Social Services Board which serves 12 Delta communities, says a new facility would make it easier to draw professionals north and provide services not currently available, like the seniors' housing complex planned next door to the new facility.

"It will be nice to see something built for our needs here," Scott said last week.

The new hospital, which the health board would like to see open in late 2001, has been endorsed in principle by the territorial government but its $25-million estimated cost has kept it in the planning stages only. Scott, who replaced former CEO Frank Russell late last year, said he's optimistic that the hospital can be built on the timelines the board has established.

Like all other Northern medical facilities, attracting and keeping nurses and doctors is a challenge and turnover is as high as it is with other Northern industries. Getting nurses in the North will become even more difficult over the next two years, he predicted, because a national shortage of nurses is forecast to happen in the next two years.

"It is very hard to recruit nurses and it's going to get much worse over the next two years," he said.

Scott noted that the benefit packages the hospital is able to offer to attract staff are governed by the contract with public-sector workers, but said the chance to practice in a brand-new facility will be a draw that can do nothing but help regional health care.

Scott identified the high staff turnover and the understaffing it causes, both in Inuvik and in the community nursing stations, as one of the main ongoing problems faced by the health-care system.

"The staff do a marvellous job but it does cause problems when you bring a new person on and it takes some time to bring that person is up to speed," he said.

Scott, whose last job was running a six-home community care society in Prince George, B.C., said the problems faced by Northern health care are not that different from those being faced by other hospitals around the country, although certain problems, such as small populations scattered over a large area, are more acute here.

In the end, most of the problems come down to money, as government cutbacks force hospitals to cut their own costs and find different ways of providing the same level of health care.

"Everyone is facing the same problems of how do you do more with less, and the integration of services," he said.