Founder of the ICCHA Wish Foundation Al Patel held a press conference at the Ramada by Wyndham to discuss cardiac care at Royal Inland Hospital. Left to right: Anil Parekh, Al Patel, Peter Milobar

(SHANNON AINSLIE / iNFOnews.ca)

The lack of cardiac care capabilities at Royal Inland Hospital is costing lives and urgent action is needed, according to the ICCHA Wish Fund.

Wish fund founder Al Patel held a press conference in Kamloops today, Sept. 19, to push the province and Interior Health Authority for a catheterization lab for cardiac patients in response to an “alarming revelation regarding the future of cardiac care at Royal Inland Hospital.”

“Despite the community’s significant contributions of over 1.4 million dollars to the ICCHA Wish fund, which helped established the ICCHA Wish Cardiac Unit in 2018, the Interior Health Authority and Cardiac Services BC have confirmed that a much-needed catheterization lab will not be established at RIH until 2040,” Patel said.

The hospital in Kamloops, which is considered a tertiary level hospital serving the surrounding region, must send people having heart attacks to Kelowna General Hospital which is a 2.5 hour ambulance ride away.

Patel said the cardiac care unit established in 2018 and funded by the community is under utilized and since the pandemic and cardiac specialists have not been replaced.

“It has resulted in a cardiac care patient occupying the ER and ICU instead of receiving specialist care in the cardiac care unit,” he said. “We have four beds in that unit and they’re not utilized for cardiac patients.

“The equipment that the ICHHA wish fund raised money for isn't being utilized and the beds are used for other patients as the administration sees fit."

The population in Kamloops is growing with an aging population in need of life-saving cardiac care, he said. 

“There are so many questions unanswered, neither Cardiac Services BC nor Interior Health has provided satisfactory answers to critical questions including how many cardiac patients have died enroute to Kelowna General, the capacity constraints for taking out cardiac patients, or the cost on these patients in these transfers," Patel said.

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BC Conservative MLA, formerly BC United, Peter Milobar spoke at the news conference saying he's been hearing concerns over cardiac care throughout the community for the last several months, particularly about the lack of functionality of the cardiac care unit.

“It’s very clear when you talk to people in the hospital that the cardiac care unit has not been functioning as a cardiac care specialized unit but in fact people are getting treatment down in the ER to be stabilized to be sent to Kelowna,” Milobar said.

In regard to the catheterization lab, he said the cardiologists at RIH agree it needs to happen.

“When you look at the scale of the dollars involved, when you look at the overall healthcare budget both with IH and with the province, it’s a project that does need to just happen," the MLA said. "The staff are willing to have it happen, they want to see it happen, they know what it would do for quality of care for people in our area and it just needs to happen and the foot dragging is not acceptable.”

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Milobar thinks Cardiac BC will be arriving for meetings in Kamloops Friday but wasn't clear on what the discussion will be about.

An online petition was created in June that demands the government bring an acute Cardiac Care Diagnostic Lab to Kamloops.

"The Kamloops community is calling on the government of British Columbia, Interior Health and Cardiac Services  BC to take immediate actions to bring life saving cardiac care closure to home," Patel said. 

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