NDP defends Surrey Memorial Hospital efforts after damning letter from doctors

The BC NDP government is on the defensive Tuesday after emergency room doctors at Surrey Memorial Hospital penned a damning call for a leadership change at Fraser Health.

From claims of a toxic workplace to the suggestion patients are being let down, the doctors don’t hold back in the letter to the health authority, even going so far as to call for a change at the top.

The BC Conservatives were quick to put out a statement of their own after the letter was leaked to media – claiming Premier David Eby has been ignoring what it calls a crisis at that hospital.

But Health Minister Adrian Dix repsonded by outlining how many new hires there have been over the last year.

“You see in the last year, how many people – net new people have been hired at the hospital – 476, net new, 43 doctors, but we’ve got to recruit more to the emergency room, in order to support our doctors in the emergency room,” Dix responded when asked about the letter on Tuesday.

Given the call for a change of leadership at Fraser Health, CTV News asked the health authority’s CEO Dr. Victoria Lee if she had any plans to step down.

“No I don’t,” Lee replied, before saying she plans to meet with doctors to discuss their concerns. “I think we’ve worked with the physicians very closely, from last year from meeting with them regularly as well as looking at all of the actions that we’ve taken, whether it’s in the community, primary care, additional urgent care, long-term care spaces, all of have come from working with physicians directly.”

The letter has also attracted the attention of Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke, who highlighted just how unusual it is that doctors have made a call for a change in leadership.

"For the doctors to come out and say that is really something for a city,” Locke told reporters on Tuesday. “Docs normally don't do that. They are concerned and I can tell you, I've been at Surrey Memorial. I see the pressure points."

The timing of the letter entering the public realm is awkward for the NDP, which finds its performance on the health care file under the microscope just over a month before the provincial election.

“They are the government of the day,” University of the Fraser Valley political scientist Hamish Telford told CTV News during an interview Monday evening. “They have been the government for the past eight years, so they are by definition responsible for the situation that we are in, and especially given that health care is squarely within provincial jurisdiction.”

Telford added as a caveat that health care has been a challenging area to attract and retain workers in recent years and that has to factor into any analysis of the government’s performance on the file.

Beyond the hiring of new physicians, Dix says he is reviewing a proposal from doctors which would improve pay for those working in the emergency room at Surrey Memorial.