Friday November 20 2015
The
Leader
▲ Surrey kicks off Christmas on Saturday 31
▲ Reward for suspect info 8
COST OF DNA TESTING DUMPED ON CITIES ▼ SURREY WILL HAVE TO SHELL OUT $410,000 FROM ITS POLICING BUDGET; DELTA $96,000 KEVIN DIAKIW
Between 1995 and 2009, police were hunting for the man who had been sexually assaulting children in Vancouver, Delta and Surrey with increasing violence. DNA evidence had ruled out 561 suspects, and crime analysts had narrowed down the most likely suspect to one man – Ibata Hexamer. He was watched by police as he threw a coffee cup away, an item that when tested, matched the DNA found on victims. Hexamer pled guilty to the crimes. “Had we not been called in and applied our approach to it, and they stayed with traditional policing investigative techniques on this file, we might not have caught him on the second hit, or the next, or the next,” Vancouver Police Department Special Const. Ryan Prox said in a book titled Eliminating Crime.
Hallway medicine may be a thing of the past. Fraser Health officials say their efforts to decongest local hospitals are working. FILE PHOTO
HOSPITAL JAMS EASE: REPORT ▶ TREND IMPROVING, HALLWAY MEDICINE NOW OVER, FRASER HEALTH SAYS
JEFF NAGEL continued on page 12
▶ “...these kinds of additional costs are certainly unwelcome.” SURREY COUN. BRUCE HAYNE
Hospitals in the Fraser Health region have improved slightly from the spring on key indicators of congestion, but large numbers of incoming patients continue to wait too long to get a bed. Fraser Health’s latest report card suggests a persistent problem still remains – despite repeated initiatives to improve
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patient flow. As of September, it shows just under 40 per cent of admitted patients got a bed within a 10-hour benchmark so far this year. That’s far below a target of 55 per cent, which is itself lower than more ambitious targets that had been set in previous years and subsequently discarded. A 2012 congestion review warned hallway medicine was so rampant in Fraser that staff were resigned that the jammed conditions would remain “intractable.” At that time, just 51 per cent of patients admitted through emergency were getting a bed within 10 hours.
The 39.8-per-cent rate for 2015 is up from 35 per cent last May. Just two hospitals – Burnaby and Fraser Canyon – are currently meeting the 55-percent target for admission within 10 hours. The majority of incoming patients wait longer than that at every other Fraser Health hospital. And two-thirds or more of the patients are waiting longer than 10 hours at Surrey Memorial, Delta, Abbotsford Regional, Chilliwack General, Eagle Ridge and Ridge Meadows hospitals. continued on page 4
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