Health Care In Right Hands?

I was shocked on hearing the news that the Interior Health Board has ordained the filling in of the Cottonwoods indoor therapeutic pool with sand. This pool was created by private donations, $375,000. It is hard to believe that a legacy of this nature should not be protected, out of respect to the various donors. Granted, the government appointees are not in the same category as trustees, who are elected and are expected to respect the wishes of donors. This pool could have been put to public use such as the arthritis society, or as an adjunct to the existing therapeutic pool at Kelowna General Hospital. Over time we will need every health facility as the population ages. Hopefully this sad statement can be reversed.

To allocate $80,000 to study the food services is beyond reason. I was a recent patient and the food was certainly not the quality of the past. One of the patients next to me wondered if the food in our B.C. prisons would not be of better quality. It would have been fun to have made a video of the food coming from the fast food restaurants, brought in by patient’s families. All that is needed is a mail out to the patients since the inception of this new food service. One dollar plus cost of paper for return of each questionnaire would provide I suspect results that would shake up the system. This business of trucking the food, reheating it and the added cost of trucking, pollution and highway congestion should be factored into these decisions. Perhaps the decision to spend another $250,000 for an energy study is better to understand the reheating of the food at K.G.H.

Certainly the medical staff, nurses and support must be applauded for their conscientious care while being aware of these derelict decisions. These misspent dollars are health care dollars and should be spent on operating rooms.

Eain Lamont
Former Kelowna General Hospital Trustee