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SANDOR GYARMATI
Former premier Bill Vander Zalm spoke Monday night in Ladner.
Liberals are on notice, Zalm tells HST rally BY
SANDOR GYARMATI
sgyarmati@delta-optimist.com
The people have already sent a powerful message to the Gordon Campbell government, so it better listen. Former premier Bill Vander Zalm showed he hasn’t lost any of his flare as he delivered that message in a colourful speech about the highly controversial harmonized sales tax Monday. Roughly 100 showed up at the public meeting, sponsored by Fight HST, at Sacred Heart Parish in Ladner to hear what the former Socred leader had to say about the tax that takes full effect July 1. The Fight HST leader, who’s also a Ladner resident, announced a province-wide petition against the tax has already surpassed 400,000 signatures in just five weeks. Delta South was the first Lower Mainland constituency to reach the goal of having 15 per cent of registered voters sign up. “We’re very lucky that we have in place the initiative referendum recall legislation. For the first time in the history of this country, we’re actually able to do something about it,” said Vander Zalm. “We’re able to tell the government, ‘Look, 80 to 90 per cent of the people are opposed to something and you simply go back to Victoria and say you don’t care, you’re going to pass it anyway regardless of how people feel. Well, that’s not democracy, that’s a See RALLY page 3
Dr. Navdeep Grewal says an expanded ER is great, but without adequate staffing patients aren’t being seen in a timely manner.
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CHUNG CHOW
ER wait times on the rise
Delta Hospital doctors say staffing hasn’t kept pace with demand, so patients waiting longer BY
SANDOR GYARMATI
sgyarmati@delta-optimist.com
Delta Hospital has its multimillion dollar emergency department expansion to better serve the community, but wait times have increased. That’s the alarming message by Dr. Navdeep Grewal, spokesperson for the emergency physicians, who warned that patient demand at the ER has grown significantly since 2006. The hospital has not increased its staffing, she said, meaning patient wait times are steadily increasing. “They do get seen here but they don’t get seen in a timely manner. In emergency medicine, care when it’s delayed is essentially care that’s denied,” she told the Optimist in an interview Monday. “That’s what we’re trying to
get across: Yes, we do get around to seeing them, but they are not being seen in a timely manner and are getting cared for in a way that they should be.” Emergency room physicians across the province have gone public in recent days about serious staffing shortages due to a stalemate in talks with the provincial government. The threeyear contract for ER physicians expired at the end of March, but Grewal said money is not an issue for the doctors. She explained a joint committee of provincial officials, the B.C. Medical Association and ER doctors was created in 2007 to find a better formula for ER staffing at 19 B.C. hospitals. The com-
mittee failed to reach a consensus and was dissolved at the end of 2009. Since that time there has been no progress and no talks, she said, adding the Ministry of Health rejected what had come from the committee. Delta has just one ER physician working at any one time, said Grewal, including the regular “peak hours” between 10 a.m. and 1 a.m. “The peak of that is afternoons and evenings and we are just overwhelmed. We have 27,000 patient visits a year,” said Grewal. “We have this great ER and are totally thankful for the community for building this ER. What it did was give us the space and the
equipment, but now we have more people coming to the ER, a 20 per cent increase since 2007.” ER doctors in Delta would like at least one more physician on shift during the busiest times, noted Grewal. While the longer wait times at Delta Hospital have impacted patient care, doctors have been told by the College of Physicians and Surgeons not to provide patient stories, said Grewal. “I can certainly vouch for near misses. I can not give you specific examples or numbers, but considering we have so many patients and one doctor at a time, there’s definitely near misses,” she said. In response to the ER staffing issue in Delta, Health Minister Kevin Falcon told the Optimist his See ER page 3