Open Letter to our local MLA Candidates re: Funding an MRI for Eagle Ridge Hospital
Dear [Recipient’s Name],
I want to extend my sincere gratitude to you for putting your name forward and seeking public office in the upcoming provincial election. Your willingness to serve is a commendable example of community leadership and is essential for fostering our democracy.
As the Chair of the Eagle Ridge Hospital Foundation, I am writing to seek your commitment to a critical healthcare need in our community. Eagle Ridge Hospital (ERH), which serves the communities of Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Anmore, and Belcarra, provides healthcare to a population exceeding 250,000 people. Despite this large population, Eagle Ridge Hospital remains the largest community in our region without direct access to a much-needed MRI.
Our neighboring hospitals, such as those in Burnaby and Langley, serve populations of similar size and are equipped with MRI machines. For comparison, the communities of White Rock/South Surrey and Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows, with populations of approximately 118,000 each (less than half of the population size that ERH serves), have MRI facilities at their local hospitals, Peace Arch and Ridge Meadows. Eagle Ridge Hospital relies heavily on the MRI at Ridge Meadows, often met with challenges for access, as well as the cumbersome task of patient transfers. This disparity significantly affects the timely diagnosis and treatment of patients within our service area, necessitating slow transfers to other facilities and impact on their service levels.
Therefore, we are asking each candidate a straightforward question: If elected, will you and your party commit to funding an MRI for Eagle Ridge Hospital within the first two years of your mandate?
We believe this investment is crucial to meet the imaging diagnosis needs of our hospital and community, and to reduce the strain of wasteful transfers to other sites. The addition of the much-needed MRI at Eagle Ridge Hospital will greatly enhance our ability to provide comprehensive care to our rapidly growing population.
We also want to inform you that we will be publishing the responses from all candidates on our website and through our social media channels in the second week of September. Transparency in this matter is essential for our community to make informed decisions during the election.
If you are interested in discussing the needs of Eagle Ridge Hospital and the direction of the Foundation further, we would be delighted to arrange a meeting at your convenience.
Thank you for your attention to this important issue and for your commitment to our community.
Sincerely,
Greg Moore
Chair, Eagle Ridge Hospital Foundation
Read the Responses
BC Green
BC NDP
“Like many places in the world, we’re facing big challenges – communities are growing, people are getting older, many doctors and nurses are retiring, and demand for cancer care is rising because people are living longer.
David Eby and the BC NDP are working to ensure BC is a place where healthcare is there when you need it. In partnership with the Eagle Ridge Hospital Foundation, Fraser Health Authority and local residents, we worked together so that people in the Tri-Cities now have access to high quality emergency care with the recent completion of the emergency department expansion. This new emergency department at Eagle Ridge Hospital was part of a record level of health care construction under the BC NDP across the province, including 29 new and expanded hospitals, as well as building new cancer centres and long-term care homes closer to the communities they serve.
Since 2017, we have been taking action to almost double the MRIs completed to 330,000 each year – thanks to adding 18 more MRI scanners around BC while expanding their hours of operation. And we are taking action to cut wait times: BC now has the second-shortest wait times in Canada for hip and knee replacements.
We know we have much more to do to keep your families and communities healthy. David Eby and the BC NDP will continue to strengthen health care, and you can expect we will do so in partnership with the Eagle Ridge Hospital Foundation and the Fraser Health Authority.
John Rustad has a 20-year record of not supporting healthcare staff and backing healthcare cuts. In 2009, Rustad’s government forced health authorities to absorb $360 million in cuts, causing a reduction of thousands of MRIs, surgeries people needed and deep cuts to programs designed to keep people out of acute care.
John Rustad and the Conservatives are planning tax breaks for those at the top and will make the rest of us pay for it in cuts to sectors like healthcare. In fact, Rustad’s healthcare plan includes a $4.1 billion cut. David Eby and the BC NDP team are building for the future, moving forward to keep you and your family healthy.
We have more work to do, and we can’t afford to go backwards.”
