A longtime Yukon surgeon is speaking out about a host of inadequacies at Whitehorse General Hospital he believes are seriously compromising patient care.

If the problems aren’t solved, says Dr. David Storey, who calls himself “a citizen, elder and MD,” the territory will require the establishment of private hospitals.

When he arrived in Whitehorse in 1974, the hospital had approximately 110 beds, 60 nurses, two orderlies and 18 doctors doing general practice. Hemodialysis was done at the Whitehorse Trailer Park, Storey writes in a lengthy letter to The Yukon Star. The city’s population was about 16,000.

Now, he writes, the current 1990s-era hospital and staff are simply too small for the Yukon’s rapidly rising population.

“In this state, the hospital simply cannot facilitate acute medical and surgical challenges,” Storey writes.

“At the last count, we had just over 50 beds – half the number from the ’70s – for almost triple the population, which sits at around 45,000. There is no current facility for hemodialysis.

“The number of administrative staff, policy analysts, programmers and planners has exploded out of control. There are more bureaucratic eyes rolling than ears listening to the boots-on-the-ground worker bees, to extract solutions. Now we are inundated with ‘consultants.’” 

In the mid-1990s, Storey recalled, “the government of the day decided to halve the size of our hospital. We had no choice but to cram the hospital with chronic-care patients.

“The Thomson Centre was built to fill patient needs but, alas, became designated as office space for policy analysts, programmers, program directors and doctors’ offices. We were losing staff and beds, and staff pleas were falling on deaf ears.”

Thomson Centre and Whistle Bend Place have been “nowhere near enough” to solve the problems, he writes.

“We are now forced to play musical beds, robbing the emergency room and short-stay beds and are, in effect, ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ — to endless complaints from clinical units without beds. We are forced to admit patients in administrative offices with no bathrooms, oxygen, suction, etc.

“Despite the abundance of administrative staff, nothing substantial has been done to assess the surgical and medical needs which are currently far too old and far too small,” the physician writes.

“We have record-breaking wait times and daily cancellations — and, as I write this letter, we have a ‘planned slowdown.’”

Part of the problem with Yukon Hospital Corp. staffing policies, he writes, “seems to be a reluctance to hire permanent staff versus casual and agency nurses, and now even army personnel. This has destroyed morale here, as it has across the country. “

Yellowknife has a similar population to Whitehorse, yet has a hospital three times the size of Whitehorse’s, he points out.

Whitehorse General, he writes, “is too old and too small to accommodate medical and surgical needs. We urgently need to have newer and more beds designated for medicine and surgery, with block booking to avoid delays.

“If we do not comply with the current wants and needs, we will be forced to establish private hospitals to accommodate the needs of the Yukon.”

He stressed that his opinions are purely his own.

See Dr. Storey’s full letter in this Friday’s print edition of The Yukon Star.