Dying for better healthcare: It’s time for BC to do right by its people

Opinion

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a place where the medical system was efficient, with robust options to help alleviate backlogs and speed up treatment for all? Somewhere where Seniors could access long-term care easily and not be on a waitlist for years, just to find somewhere to live that addressed their needs? Where people aren’t dying on waitlists for diagnosis and treatment?

There is such a place, with a system that could be emulated by British Columbia for the good of all British Columbians. It’s about the same size as BC, both demographically and geographically, and with a GDP-per-capita that is lower than BC’s this system is something that should be affordable to us.

Where is this healthcare utopia?

First of all, it’s not a utopia, because nothing is perfect, but based on the broken typewriter’s recent experience, New Zealand has a far superior healthcare system to BC’s.

New Zealand, with a population of 5.2 million people is roughly the same size of British Columbia, with its 5.5 million people. The Gross Domestic Product per capita of NZ is $68,000 CAD, compared to BC’s $105,000 CAD. The approximate overall GDP of NZ vs BC, in Canadian dollars, is $353 billion vs $578 billion.

If New Zealand can afford this user-friendly healthcare system, so can BC.

Why the comparison, and why compare New Zealand in particular to British Columbia?

Because my father, who lives in New Zealand, had a stroke at the beginning of September, so my brother and I embarked on a venture we’d been miraculously avoiding for decades.

Since neither of us lives in NZ, our initial contact with both Dad and his doctors was via email and video call, with the help of our relatives. Luckily, I have a lot of family in and around Christchurch where Dad lives, so they were on-hand to provide updates.

After less than a week in Christchurch Hospital (the main public hospital in the city), Dad was moved to Burwood, another public hospital, with a stroke unit. We didn’t have to request this, put him on a waiting list or pay anything. It was automatic, standard operating procedure.

In the stroke unit, he had a team looking after him. The team consisted of the main doctor, a physiotherapist, an occupational therapist, nutritionist, and a speech therapist, as well as a social worker. There’re several teams in the unit, each looking after just six patients.

He had physio several times a week while there, working on helping him regain as much mobility and independence as possible.

Because he’s a New Zealand citizen, he didn’t have to pay a thing for any of this care.

My brother and I didn’t have to worry about anything regarding Dad’s care because it was obvious he was being very well looked after. Which gave us the freedom to arrange the next steps in Dad’s life – care after he was discharged.

There would be no return to the home he’d lived in for 30 years. Left-handed and paralysed on left side, he needs hospital level care because he can’t do for himself anymore.

Between the stroke and our arrival in NZ, I’d done some research on care options – the internet is a wonderful thing – and discovered a fabulous resource for seniors, their families and caregivers, which contained all the answers we needed.

It’s called the Eldernet Group and has resources for absolutely anything one might need. Including a list of care homes and retirement villages around the country. Some are single purpose, for dementia care for example, while others have everything from independent living through to hospital level care and even hospice and respite care.

I found a couple of places in an area that Dad liked, which were also easy for us to find because we used to live nearby.

With all the information on the internet, Dad was able, even with his limited mobility, to research the facility and endorse our choice.

Four days after I arrived in Christchurch, we had a tour of the facility where Dad now lives. They had several rooms available depending on the level of care he would need – which we didn’t know for sure at the time. Three days later, thanks to the diligence of his team at Burwood in telling us the level of care he’d need going forward, we were able to secure a room.

No massive wait times. The other place we’d considered also had 3 rooms available, but it required a large deposit, of which the resident or his/her estate gets 75 percent back upon leaving the facility.

Through the Eldernet website, I found a service called Seniors Transitions, which helps seniors and their families downsize, prepare homes for sale and has real estate agents they work with. Within ten days of our arrival, not only had we secured our dad a place to live, but we’d arranged for a house cleaning, sale and disposal of the things that he couldn’t take with him, and arranged the sale of his house, all thanks to Eldernet and Seniors Transitions.

Five weeks after the stroke that turned his life upside down and stole his independence, my father was safely ensconced in a new, modern facility.

A mere thirteen days after I arrived in Christchurch, everything was done, other than selling his house for him.

Unlike his stays in the two hospitals, his care isn’t free in his new home. There’s a set daily rate for care nationwide. Everyone pays the same. If you can’t pay, the government will cover it. You don’t get a reduced level of care when the government pays. If a person is paying for their own care, and their assets fall below the threshold and they need to apply for government coverage, they won’t be moved to an inferior facility.

Is this the kind of care seniors, or anyone, can expect in British Columbia?

We’ve all heard about people with cancer being sent to Washington State for treatment that they can’t get in BC. And people dying in corridors while waiting to be seen in the emergency departments. Or ER’s being put on “diversion” because there’s not enough staff.

It’s a chronic problem that’s been plaguing BC’s health system for years.

A relative of ours here in Fort St. John had a stroke a few years ago, and she certainly didn’t get anywhere near the same level of care my father did.

When she had the stroke, she was flown by air ambulance to Vancouver General Hospital. I don’t recall how long she was there for, but when it was time to discharge her, I flew down to bring her home.

As I was hot footing it through VGH’s lobby on my way to the ward where she was, I heard a strangled cry that sounded like my name. There was my sister-in-law, sitting on a bench in the lobby waiting for me. She’d been there for ages, waiting, unable to talk properly, unable to walk unaided. Just dumped there for God only knows how many hours.

No automatic transfer to a rehab facility. No team of doctors helping her with rehab so that she could at least speak clearly. No one to give her family an update or instructions upon discharge.

Yes, NZ has challenges too.

One of my dearest friends is a nurse in NZ, and things aren’t perfect there either. Between staffing shortages and bed shortages which in turn cause backlogs in the emergency departments, the NZ medical system is suffering through many of the same issues that plague our hard-working medical staff.

But they’re not closing ERs, and while there are waitlists for things both assessments and surgery or treatment, people aren’t dying on waitlists at the same rate as they are here.

For example, median wait times for elective surgery in NZ is between 100 and 200 days, depending on specialty; whereas in BC the median wait time is 200 to 400 days.

In 2023-24 there were 4,516 deaths in BC – 988 waiting for surgery, 3,528 for diagnostics. In NZ, which doesn’t track waitlist deaths as meticulously as BC, the available information shows between an estimated 200 and 500 people died on waitlists in 2023-24.

While comparing Christchurch and Fort St. John might seem like comparing apples and oranges, especially since Christchurch is a larger urban centre and has larger population of seniors; both cities face the same pressures from an aging population. Approximately 15 percent of Christchurch’s population is 65 and over, while 10 percent of Fort St. John’s is 65 and over.

According to the BC Senior’s Advocate, the average wait time to be admitted to a long-term care facility in Fort St. John has jumped from 146 days in 2018 to 290 days in 2025. Conversely, in Christchurch with a similar percentage of the population aged 65 and older, the median wait time is 125 to 176 days.

Obviously, my father’s experience yielded a much shorter wait time.

How has New Zealand achieved this?

Keep in mind, their system is facing the same challenges as ours – staff burnout, doctor and nurse shortage, bed shortage and post-Covid backlog. Yet, the experience is vastly different.

New Zealand allows private options. That’s how they’ve done it. There are three private hospitals in Christchurch, and 30 nationwide.

British Columbia has five.

Having private options allows people who are on public waitlists, to access those private options, enabling others to move up the public waitlist. It would cut the backlog.

During the 2024 provincial election, it was encouraging to hear BC Conservative leader John Rustad speak about his party’s goals for healthcare in the province, if the Conservatives had won.

He proposed emulating the European models of healthcare, which like New Zealand and Australia, are made up of a combination of public and private services.

But alas, the Conservatives didn’t win, and we’re stuck with a broken model, featuring too many managers, too few doctors and nurses, and no options other than waiting. Waiting for diagnosis, waiting for treatment, waiting for surgery, waiting to die.

That’s another thing. The increase in the use of Medical Assistance in Dying. The number of times MAID was used in BC has nearly doubled from 1,572 in 2020 to 3,050 in 2024, helped along by the removal through Bill C-7 in 2021 of the “reasonably foreseeable death” requirement.

That number doesn’t include the number of times MAID was offered, such as the reports of veterans being offered MAID instead of treatment.

MAID isn’t healthcare.

British Columbians are dying to get into long-term care, dying on waitlists, dying in hospital corridors. The solutions are right in front of the government, but it seems that all they do is throw money at the problem, hire more managers and scream about “American-style healthcare” whenever reforms of any kind are suggested.

If New Zealand can provide a more robust system, given the exact same challenges British Columbia has, with a similar-sized population and GDP, shouldn’t the government at least look into it?

Perhaps get someone to create something like the Eldernet Group and provide a comprehensive list of resources and services to help seniors and their families make the inevitable transition less stressful and more dignified for everyone.

Maybe sit down with John Rustad, who had some sensible-sounding ideas, and work towards creating a better model, a better system that will benefit everyone?

Because the system we have right now isn’t working. In fact, it’s killing us.