Ninety-four-year-old Lore Wiener hopes to live in her own home until the end of her life, but with the impending closure of primary care at three Vancouver Coastal Health clinics, her daughter says she faces an uncertain future.
Lore Wiener lives five minutes from Pacific Spirit Community Health Centre in Kerrisdale and has relied on its primary care for at least 10 years for basic needs like getting prescriptions, referrals, flu shots, and general consultation.
The centre has enabled her to live in her own home instead of a seniors’ home. Her daughter, North Vancouver resident Claudia Cornwall, says the care has lightened the burden on her.
By the end of October, Vancouver Coastal Health will end primary care service in three of its clinics —Evergreen, South Vancouver and Pacific Spirit — and will consolidate those services at Raven Song Community Health Centre in Mount Pleasant.
Aside from the “bureaucratic letter” she’s received, Cornwall is uncertain whether her mother will be assigned to a new physician in the Kerrisdale neighbourhood or to Raven Song.
“The nurse that I was talking to who was responsible for finding primary care physicians for the people affected by this move, she told me it was a daunting task,” said Cornwall. “[The nurse] hasn’t got another primary care physician yet. I’ve made some calls around Kerrisdale and nobody, no other physician is taking new patients.”
When Wiener broke her hip, Cornwall says her mother’s care from the centre “saved taxpayers a lot of money” because it enabled her to recover at home rather than at the hospital for two to three weeks.
“The thing about the clinic is that they had all these other services so that my mom could have physiotherapy in her home, occupational therapist in her home, nurse in her home, she could have a visit from the doctor at her home. So just getting another family doctor doesn’t even substitute for all of that.”
Wiener is among the “minority” of clients who VCH spokeswoman Anna Marie D’Angelo says don’t meet the criteria for service at Raven Song. More than 70 per cent of patients, or about 10,000 patients that do not meet the VCH Primary Care criteria, will be receiving care with their regular doctor or a doctor they know. VCH’s “redesign” will target a new client group.
“We believe this redesign is going to provide better access and care to a client group that is marginalized, that has complex care needs, mental health challenges … It’s absolutely not about cutting costs. It’s about having capacity and meeting the needs of the client group,” D’Angelo said.
D’Angelo added in an email statement to the Courier that, “there are 900 patients who meet VCH primary care criteria who have or are being transferred for care at Raven Song. We will be adding six physicians, five registered nurses, two social workers and one nurse practitioner to Raven Song to our existing team for primary care clients to accommodate the transferred patients.”
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