FILE PHOTO - Royal Inland Hospital.

(ASHLEY LEGASSIC / iNFOnews.ca)

Critics are taking aim at Interior Health again for its staffing at Royal Inland Hospital, this time for cardiac care.

The health authority has responded to say patients have no need to worry, while confirming service expansions at the Kamloops hospital have been hampered by staff shortages.

"The services that have been provided for years, since the (coronary care unit) opened have remained the same, it's just maybe not happening in the dedicated space," Jaymi Chernoff, Interior Health executive in charge of cardiac services, said.

BC Conservatives and ICCHA-WISH Foundation took aim at the health authority this week, calling out gaps in the hospital's cardiac care. They pointed to overnight closures in its coronary care unit, a shortage of specialists and a delay in expanding the intensive cardiac unit.

Royal Inland did recently lose a cardiologist while already operating with one fewer than Interior Health budgets for the hospital. Now with six specialists, the delays in expanding services were largely blamed on staffing challenges persisting since the COVID pandemic.

"Like many services in health authorities in the province and the country, needing to redirect and focus efforts on COVID response definitely interrupted and stalled a lot of the expansion planning. Then, shortly after that, obviously ongoing concerns with staffing in the health system continues to right itself. There's still a lot of work we need to do in that space," Chernoff said.

While there have been adjustments in the intensive cardiac unit, she said the level of care available at Royal Inland Hospital hasn't changed.

Kamloops MLA Peter Milobar, however, cast doubt on the health care available in Kamloops and suggested patients at high risk are sent to Kelowna instead.

"The NDP's answer? Schedule your heart attack at a hospital two hours away — as if medical emergencies run on their timetable," he said in a media release, going on to say cardiac care in Kamloops won't fully meet the need locally until 2040 under current plans.

Chernoff did say it's common for the most serious and invasive operations to be done at Kelowna General Hospital, the health region's largest hospital.

"It all depends on the level of services and intervention the cardiac patient requires. Kamloops is a fantastic site that has a very skilled compliment of medical cardiologists, who provide phenomenal care in terms of medical stabilization for patients," she said. "If the patient's needs extend beyond what can be dealt with from a medical perspective and they need a invasive intervention, in current state the only site in this health authority that offers that is in Kelowna."

Chernoff said Interior Health is planning to extend that care beyond Kelowna.

"We always need to balance, ensuring you've got resources to provide care closer to home with the cost of implementing new services," she said.

Asked about whether Interior Health intends to rely on Kelowna General Hospital to support patients who would otherwise go to Royal Inland, Chernoff said the health care services in Kamloops are "phenomenal" and there's "a lot of opportunity to grow."

"There is always a focus on Kamloops and ensuring we've got the services that are required to meet the population needs and to continue to grow those services," she said.

The ICCHA-WISH Foundation, which fundraises for specialized cardiac equipment in Kamloops, also criticized Interior Health for "mistakenly" placing the coronary care unit on the wrong floor, too far from the intensive care unit and emergency department.

Chernoff said that's not quite true.

Interior Health built the unit in the new Gaglardi Tower and staff later complained of the distance from the other departments. There's a chance it could be moved sometime in the future, but the health authority hasn't made any decisions or estimate the cost if it were done.

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