The Invermere & District Hospital is a Level 1 Community Hospital in the East Kootenay health service area. Located to the south of Golden, in east central B.C., the hospital offers services including acute care, laboratory, and 24 hour emergency.
Offering a large range of preventative, diagnostic and treatment services, this is the only hospital between Cranbrook, 125 kilometres south, and Golden, 120 kilometres to the north.
One of those services, a Dialysis Unit, was removed from the hospital in 2013, forcing the last user of the service to travel the 125 kilometres to Cranbrook three times a week for treatment. Though there was at the time only one user of the Dialysis Unit, the reason for its removal was not made clear.
See the news item below.
Dialysis equipment
removed from Invermere
by Dan Walton - Invermere Valley Echo
posted Jul 31, 2013 at 11:00 AM
While the community of Invermere isn't losing its dialysis unit without a fight, the remaining equipment was removed from the hospital on Thursday, July 25th, following the removal of the reverse osmosis machine earlier this month ('Dialysis unit moving to Sparwood,' The Echo, July 10th, 2013).
“I can confirm that the equipment was removed,” Interior Health (IH) communications officer Karl Hardt told The Echo. “[Interior Health regional director of renal health services] Paula [James] explained why we made the decision, and all those reasons haven’t changed.”
The Invermere & District Hospital dialysis unit was servicing three patients before its closure. After one patient began home treatment and another lost their life, Kirk Sellers was the only person receiving regular treatment at the local unit before its closure.
“I’ve stated over and over again that we’re not in favour of this in terms of service to the entire Columbia Valley, so I’m quite disappointed,” said Mr. Sellers.
Since the local unit has been out of service, Mr. Sellers has been commuting to Cranbrook three times each week for treatment.
While IH has said the reason is a staffing issue, Mr. Sellers feels the health authority is misrepresenting the issue “time and time again.”
Pat Shuttleworth with the BC Nurses Union agrees, and claims that willing nurses were available for the job.
Read on at the Invermere Valley Echo