FILE PHOTO - Royal Inland Hospital.

(ASHLEY LEGASSIC / iNFOnews.ca)

New data from the Interior Health Authority shows just how serious the staff shortages are at one of the B.C. Interior's largest regional hospitals.

iNFOnews.ca has been reporting for months about the impact the shortage of staff at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops is have on patients, and the workers themselves.

The impacts have included repeated short-term closures of small hospital emergency rooms in the region.

READ MORE: Kamloops ER had less than 50% staffing on long weekend: B.C. Liberals

Data provided to iNFOnews.ca, July 25, by Interior Health shows just how bad the shortages are — and were even before COVID.

As a single day snapshot, on Friday, July 22, there were 283 unfilled clinical positions at Royal Inland Hospital. That’s 28% of the 1,011 such positions.

By contrast, there were only 202 vacancies at Kelowna General Hospital that same day, or 13% of its 1,554 clinical staff.

These were registered nurse, licence practical nurse and care aid positions.

That was just a single-day snapshot, so for a more accurate comparison, Interior Health provided data for a four-week period in June and the same four weeks in June 2019, before the impact of COVID.

Still, the differences are glaring.

For this year, Royal Inland had a 23% vacancy rate for that four-week period while Kelowna General’s rate was 11%.

“We have added additional services at (Royal Inland Hospital) with the Phil and Jennie Gaglardi tower opening and there is a lag from vacancies to recruitment which will impact the numbers for 2022,” Interior Health said in an email.

Still, the vacancy rate for all front-line staff in the Interior Health region — that stretches from the Cariboo to the Alberta and U.S. borders — was only 12% June.

In May, Tracey Rannie, executive director of clinical operations for Royal Inland Hospital, told iNFOnews.ca that staffing shortages at the hospital have been happening for some time because of things like COVID and other “stressors” such as wildfires and flooding last year.

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But the staffing differences predate COVID and last year's forest fires and floods.

In the same four-week period in 2019, the vacancy rate in Kamloops was 10%, more than double the 4% in Kelowna.

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