YOUR PERSPECTIVE: Government must do more to improve health care in Abbotsford

First off, we would like to congratulate the team at Fraser Valley Today as they launch a new site for news, information, opinion, community events and more. Now more than ever, it is vital for people to be able to access timely, accurate information and we are pleased to see another outlet available to Fraser Valley residents and visitors.

We also look forward to sharing our opinion pieces as part of this new endeavour, and this week we would like to discuss the state of health care in our community of Abbotsford.

Abbotsford is no different than other communities across the province which are facing a lack of family doctors, staff shortages in our hospitals, and long delays in accessing walk-in clinics or urgent and primary care centres (UPCCs). The current NDP government has held up UPCCs as the answer to many of our health care woes, but we’ve obtained information that shows they are not working out as promised.

Two years after its opening, the UPCC in Abbotsford remains chronically understaffed and is failing to meet the health care needs of Abbotsford residents — in particular, the tens of thousands in our community who have no family doctor. Despite being designed to offer both primary care and emergency services, the medical centre didn’t even start offering urgent care until last November, more than a year after it opened. Data on UPCC staffing from the Ministry of Health shows that Abbotsford’s UPCC has only 53 per cent of the staff it is budgeted for, and a staggering eight per cent of the physicians it should have.