BC’s Minister of Health, Josie Osborne, is visiting Â鶹AV General Hospital today (KGH), but local MLA Gavin Dew says the visit doesn’t fix what he calls a long-standing crisis in health care.
“Today, Minister Osborne is finally visiting KGH, but we are hearing some groups of healthcare professionals have been selectively excluded from meetings,” he said. “Either the Minister doesn’t want to hear the full story, or information is being withheld from her. Clearly, there is much more work to do to rebuild trust and reset the system.”
The health ministry has confirmed Osborne’s visit.
“The distinct impression I get is that she’s coming to town in order to have a curated set of meetings so that when she doesn’t show up at the town hall on Wednesday, she can say she was here,” Dew added.
IH is currently being led by an interim CEO following the resignation of Susan Brown earlier this month. While some see the leadership change as a step forward, Dew argues it doesn’t go far enough.
“Swapping out one person at Interior Health doesn’t let the province off the hook,” Dew said. “This crisis didn’t appear overnight—and it didn’t happen in a vacuum.”
He pointed to stalled or delayed health care improvements, including 50 hospital beds worth of unfinished space at KGH that have sat idle for more than a decade.
“Patients are treated in crowded hallways,” he said. “We need more doctors trained at UBCO and more lab techs coming out of Okanagan College. And we need a government that understands health care in the Interior isn’t an afterthought—it’s a priority. So far, we’ve seen little urgency and little proof that Minister Osborne gets that.”
In May, the 10-bed inpatient pediactrics unit at KGH was shut down due to a shortage of doctors. IH has stated that is making progress to reopen the unit, however, no firm date has been announced.
Dew acknowledged that the health minister was at least "showing up."
"But you make choices around what you do when you schedule on of these things," he said. "The fact there is no media release, there's no media availability that I'm aware of, there's no details, suggests to me that there is still some work to be done."
Dew and fellow Â鶹AV-area BC Conservative MLAs Kristina Loewen and Macklin McCall are hosting Â鶹AV Health Care Crisis Town Hall on Wednesday, July 2. The public event runs from 5–7 p.m. at the Coast Capri Hotel and will feature patients, families and frontline workers sharing personal experiences with the health care system.
“This is a chance to hear directly from the people who live with the consequences of this government’s failure every day,” Dew said, “and to send a message to the government that it’s time to fix our healthcare.”
