The Prince George Healthcare System: Our City’s Shortcomings

The Prince George Urgent and Primary Care Centre recently ended a contract with many of the doctors providing care at their clinic, which of course raised questions and concerns regarding the state of the clinic. A statement has been released informing us that the clinic is going to stay open, but I believe it is reasonable to be skeptical about this claim. The clinic has lost money and doctors, and if you have ever been there you know that it is constantly full of people in need of care who wait for hours to see a physician, and are sometimes even told that they will have to wait until the next day to come in.
 
The healthcare in Prince George has not been excellent in recent years, and we have seen minimal efforts towards improvement. We have very few family doctors practicing in Prince George. I personally know many people who do not have a family doctor or have waited years to get a family doctor because there are so few of them in our city. Although some people do have family doctors, appointments can take weeks or even months to get, and getting a second opinion from another healthcare professional regarding a more complicated issue is impossible to do in Prince George.
 
Walk-in clinics, such as Prince George Urgent and Primary Care Centre, are the primary source of healthcare in Prince George for individuals who do not have access to a family doctor. However, overcrowding in clinics is a common deterrent for many people. Impatience isn’t entirely to blame for the avoidance of walk-in clinics for people without family doctors in need of care. Parents either have to pay for childcare (which is oftentimes very expensive and can be incredibly difficult if they have a child with a disability or special needs), or take their kids with them, which can be a less than ideal scenario considering the spread of illness that is likely to happen in a clinic and the very long wait time. Individuals who work need to plan for a long and undetermined wait time at clinics, and workers can have very limited freedom to take days off in some cases, or in others they may not be able to financially afford to take a day off to go to a clinic at the time that they need to.
 
The Prince George healthcare system fails to meet our cities needs in terms of quality of care, even for those who have the financial and situational privilege of accessing care. I previously stated that for individuals with family doctors who have not received sufficient care getting a second opinion is not an option in Prince George. Sometimes these patients are out of options, and sometimes these patients are given referrals to other clinics or treatment options. Some patients are referred to things such as physical therapy or Vancouver hospitals without receiving any treatment or diagnosis from their family doctor. Alternative treatments, such as physical therapy, and travelling for healthcare are incredibly expensive, and unfortunately for many Prince George citizens that means that they are not able to access this care although it is the only care they can receive.
 
While we watch the quality of healthcare and the number of healthcare providers in Prince George plummet we can see our city’s drug crisis on a steady incline. Prince George has toxic drug alerts released all too often informing anyone who goes through the trouble of searching it up that various substances have tested positive for various types of fentanyl. News publications and a needle exchange are a nice start, but Prince George has one of the highest overdose rates in British Columbia and efforts to settle our toxic drug crisis and the distribution of fentanyl in our city needs to be a top priority. Overdoses include youth all too often, which is an issue that our city should be rushing to address, but we are taking steps towards harm-reduction at a snail’s pace.
 
The healthcare system in Prince George has many shortcomings and a long way to go in order to meet the needs of our city. Every individual in Prince George deserves to receive adequate care in a timely manner regardless of their finances, career, past or present addiction, and access to a family doctor. Adequate care means that a patient’s privacy is respected, their diagnostic needs are met through proper testing, and they are able to access affordable treatment that they are properly informed about and that their healthcare provider believes through thorough assessment will be effective. I feel the need to define adequate healthcare because it has become rare in Prince George.