OSOYOOS TIMES-September 23, 2009

By Paul Everest - Osoyoos Times

The present and future of Osoyoos’s health care system were discussed in length during a Destination Osoyoos-sponsored review on Sept. 15.
Roughly 35 people from the community participated in five discussion sessions at the Osoyoos Visitor Information Centre hosted by Kines Consulting Inc., a Vancouver-based consulting firm specializing in health care and social services.
The sessions focused on the current state of health care as well as the gaps in care services in Osoyoos.
Mona Kines, the firm’s president and senior consultant, said the participants represented several areas of the community including seniors, business people who provide private health care services such pharmacies, laboratories or holistic services, women, people who are new to the community and people who have lived in Osoyoos for many years.
The participants were given the opportunity to talk about Osoyoos’s health care needs while looking at various models of health care services offered in other resort communities or communities similar in size and composition to Osoyoos.
Kines said the participants were open to “out of the box thinking.”
“These people really seemed to understand that health care services, particularly acute care services, need to be provided based on standards of care and critical mass,” she said during an interview on Sept. 18.
Mark Watt, Interior Health’s director of health services for Osoyoos and Oliver, attended all the discussion sessions, both as a participant and to provide information on Interior Health’s programs and services in Osoyoos.
He said he wasn’t surprised by some of the issues that came up.
“I heard the community really speaking about after-hours care and the possibility of having an urgent care clinic in the community particularly available on the weekend or in the evening hours,” he said.
Other issues that came up during the sessions included doctor recruitment and retention and the need for better health care facilities in Osoyoos.
Watt said he was happy such discussions took place and involved so many people from different backgrounds because “it takes a community, including public, private and municipal parties to have a comprehensive health plan.”
Some of the health care services models looked at during the discussion sessions included public and private models.
Kines said she noticed that most of the participants agreed that Osoyoos would benefit from a “medical mall” model, where medical professionals work together in one, easily accessible facility and can work together as a team.
Destination Osoyoos (DO) and the developers of the proposed “Oasis” development retained Kines’ firm to conduct the discussion sessions.
If approved by the Town, the Oasis development would be built on land bordering Peanut Lake and Hwy. 3 between the Avalon Mobile Home Park and the Super 8 Hotel.
The developers behind the project, Ron Bartsch of Osoyoos and Stanley Yasin of Vancouver, plan to build a facility dedicated to professional and health care services on the property similar to the medical mall model Kines spoke of, along with three residential buildings.
Derek Noske, chair of DO’s board, said in an email that his organization’s involvement in setting up the discussion sessions fits into DO’s mandate.
“As an organization, we were directed by Town Council in the past and also currently to assist where possible in attracting doctors to our community,” he said. “In this instance the proposed (Oasis) project compliments that recruiting effort, both from a physical location point of view as well as for forward planning of our communities’ health care needs.”
Kines said the next step in the review process will be one-to-one follow-up interviews with the participants to gather more information about what is “on the table” for further discussion regarding health care services in Osoyoos and what is “off the table.”
Once that is completed, the information from the discussion sessions and the follow-up interviews will be used to create an “opportunities assessment” for DO and Osoyoos town council that will include recommendations for additional health care services in the community.
“We’re going to be saying ‘Here are some opportunities for the advancement of health care services in your community, right from the top priority to things you might want to investigate,’” Kines said.
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