IH brass questioned on staffing woes at RIH, rural facilities

They know there are problems and they are working to fix them.

That was the word from Interior Health brass on Thursday, under lengthy questioning from a panel of local elected officials looking for answers about the challenges in recent months at Royal Inland Hospital and area rural healthcare facilities.

Lisa Zetes-Zanatta, IH’s executive director of rural clinical operations and Tracey Rannie, executive director for clinical operations at RIH, presented an operations update and took questions from the Thompson Regional Hospital District committee on Thursday.

Zetes-Zanatta said IH is hiring in a number of smaller communities, including two new physicians in Lillooet, where recent multiple retirements meant that instead of 6.5 full-time doctors, the community is down to 1.5.

She said more physicians and nurses have been also hired in Clearwater.

“We've had challenges in maintaining our hospital services due to staffing resource shortages in both nursing and medical imaging,” Zetes-Zanatta said, adding that Clearwater is one of the only regions she oversees where lab services have been stable.

“Laboratory is pressured across the entire system. It's not just a rural concern, our labs at RIH are at half capacity,” she said.

Director Barbara Wiebe, a Lillooet councillor and committee member, said they are short with lab techs, doctors, and they have surgeon “that’s living in Victoria, basically.”

“A lot of people are moving to the rural areas just to get a break and to retire. So you're dealing with an older population. And it looks great when you look at it on paper, ‘Oh, they have a hospital, they have a clinic,’” Wiebe said.

“I'm really curious as to whether there's going to be any incentives to keep new staff that comes, whether it be housing, or forgiving [student] loans, and if there's going to be a succession plan, because I know the older doctors that have retired would very willingly mentor.”

Zetes-Zanatta said IH is “very actively” working to find solutions, including forgiveness programs for tuition, rural incentives and rural recruitment bonuses.

She added that finding housing for staff is “one of the deepest barriers” to recruitment in rural areas.

Rannie said between COVID-19 outbreaks, wildfires, and other events, staff have been under “a lot of pressure” at Royal Inland Hospital, and throughout the Interior.

“There’s still great work continuing here at site, but then also saying that, the last few months have tested us all,” Rannie said.

She said a rapid response team came this fall to support RIH, and a second manager has been posted to support a “very busy emergency department” — a department that’s set to be expanded during phase two of the patient care tower project.

According to Rannie, a coordinator is also being hired to give the two emergency department managers more capacity to be with their staff, additional training lines have been added and management is doing rotation reviews.

Rannie said a staff recruitment campaign is ongoing, and IH is working with post-secondary institutions to help meet hospital needs.

Mike O’Reilly, committee director and Kamloops councillor, said city council has heard many concerns over staffing.

“Numerous people have said they don't feel this is the bottom, they don't think this is the worst, that it is going to get worse,” O’Reilly said.

“My big question, to anybody that wants to answer, is would RIH be better served if more administration for the hospital was based in Kamloops and not in Kelowna?”

Rannie agreed staffing is challenging at this time, but said they are working on it.

“Some of the work that we're doing here in regards to staffing, it’s going to help Royal Inland, but it's also going to help locally, regionally as well. It's going to help other sites across the whole region,” she said.

Rannie said the new vice president of clinical operations for Interior Health North, Diane Shendruk, will be moving to Kamloops.

Ken Christian, Kamloops mayor and TRHD chair, said Shendruk has reached out to him to meet once she gets settled in the city.

Christian said the long discussion between TRHD committee members and IH staff on Thursday reflects the fact that constituents are worried about Interior Health operations.

“There really is no other venue for locally elected individuals to have a conversation about what is so important to our constituents, and that's health care,” Christian said.

“When I do get an opportunity to meet with the new vice president, one of the things that I'm going to be asking for is some kind of format where we can have these discussions about operational issues on a regular basis.”