Dear Editor:
Re: MLA Karin Kirkpatrick Raises Alarm on Wait Times for MRIs (Oct. 26 news story)
Good on Ms. Kirkpatrick for helping to raise public awareness concerning this hugely important issue. This is one of the most valuable contributions that an effective MLA or MP can make to public administration, discourse or policy development.
There is simply no excuse for the delay in installing this imaging equipment. I wonder how long the fund-raising campaign itself took, as I assume it began after the need for a new MRI machine was identified. The total elapsed time from need assessment and determination to installation of the new machine looks likely to be unconscionable.
What I have never understood is why such equipment has to be purchased at all. It seems to me that it would be far more efficient to establish a dedicated fund for leasing all such major necessary equipment, periodically replacing particular machines as significant upgrades in the relevant technology occur.
The more substantial challenge identified in the news article concerns the pressing need to recruit and train the required personnel. Again, I detect no sense of urgency on the part of the provincial government or the regional health authorities to take the necessary action. Words like “crisis” and “emergency” are bandied about rather indiscriminately but there appears to little evidence to date that significant steps are being taken to effect improvement, the long-standing “opioid crisis” being a case in point. Our shortages in nurses and other essential hospital and care facility staff have long pre-dated the arrival of COVID-19 in March 2020. Yet here we are.
One thing of which there is no shortage in B.C. or elsewhere in Canada is highly paid health-care bureaucrats. In this regard, a perusal of the most recent annual filing (2021) pursuant to the BC Financial Information Act by the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority is an instructive, not to say disturbing, read.
We’re extremely unlikely to escape the present mess with the same people in key leadership roles who have been there while it was being created. I refer not only to those in elected office at the federal and provincial levels but, in some ways more importantly, those who hold senior unelected positions. Administrations may change but if the same individuals continue to occupy crucial bureaucratic decision-making posts then necessary change is unlikely to ensue despite promises to the contrary.
David Marley
West Vancouver
