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S StAr | Thursday, February 18, 2016
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Soccer Tykes Ready To Wrap Up Season
Hit and run witness sought Aldergrove Star
ART BANDENIEKS PHOTO
This was the last weekend of the regular season for many of the older Aldergrove Youth Soccer Club players. Some teams are advancing to the next level of championship play. Next weekend will be the last active weekend for the younger AYSC members, U12 and younger.
Police are looking for witnesses to a hit and run that occurred in the intersection of 272 Street and Fraser Highway on Wednesday, Jan. 27. At approximately 4:30 p.m. that day, a 12 year old boy was walking northbound on 272 Street. With the ‘walk’ sign illuminated, he was crossing Fraser Highway on the west side of the intersection when an eastbound black truck struck the boy. The driver stopped momentarily, looked at the boy, then continued south on 272 Street. The driver is described as 40 to 50 year old male. The only description of the truck is black. The young boy suffered non-life threatening injuries that did not require medical attention. If you have any information that might assist with this investigation, please call Langley RCMP at 604-5323200. Should you need to remain anonymous, please call CrimeStoppers. There are four ways to leave an “anonymous tip” with Crime Stoppers: phone 1-800-222-TIPS (8477), website www. solvecrime.ca, text BCTIP and your message to CRIMES (274637) or via Facebook at www.facebook.com/metrovancouvercrimestoppers
Fraser cuts hospital beds as care homes open By JEFF NAGEL Aldergrove Star
Fraser Health will close 80 hospital beds across the region this spring as it simultaneously opens up hundreds of new residential care beds and embarks on a long-awaited shift of aging patients out of hospitals and back into local communities. The strategy has been years in the works and is culminating now as 400 residential beds are set to come on stream across the region. “This will happen over the next six
months,” Fraser Health spokesperson Tasleem Juma said. “As those residential care beds come available, we’ll be able to move people into them and slowly the reductions will happen.” Beds will be cut at 10 hospitals – all of them except Delta and Fraser Canyon. The reductions work out to less than three per cent of Fraser’s 3,000 total hospital acute care beds. Fraser officials hope the shift into the community will ultimately mean better, more appropriate care for
those patients, as well as fewer people clogging hospital beds and less ER congestion. “What we’re hearing is people want to go home and they want to go back into their communities,” Juma said. Juma maintained the region will see a net increase in combined residential and acute care beds and a net increase in jobs as more support staff are being deployed for community care. Ten new hospice beds are also
being opened. The 400 new residential complex care beds opening are split between four projects in Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Surrey and White Rock at a cost of $34.5 million to Fraser. Fraser has long pursued a “home is best” long-range strategy to decongest hospitals but that took on renewed urgency in 2013 when Health Minister Terry Lake ordered a review after the health region repeatedly failed to stay within its budget. “Care in the community is cer-
tainly less expensive than hospital care,” Juma acknowledged. “The long-term benefit is we will see those gains in the future.” B.C. Nurses Union president Gayle Duteil opposes the plan to close beds, saying hospitals are already heavily congested before the planned shift in resources. “Last week we saw a record high number of patients waiting for beds in wards,” Duteil said. “Some patients were waiting in the ER for upwards SEE: Page 3
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