Vancouver Island denied rush lung transplant over staffing issues

A Conservative MLA on Vancouver Island says he’s seeking answers for a constituent who had a shocking experience with B.C.’s health-care system earlier this month.

Courtenay-Comox MLA Brennan Day says the man got a call from health-care officials late on a Friday night, telling him to rush to Vancouver as soon as he could for a double lung transplant — something for which he’d been waiting months.

But when he arrived at the hospital, the man was told that the surgery would have to be cancelled because the perfusionist, a specialist required for the surgery, was attending to multiple emergencies and couldn’t support the transplant.

Perfusionists are trained medical professionals who operate equipment to support a patient’s heart and lungs during surgery.

Vancouver Coastal Health said it’s conducting an internal investigation of the incident, but told us this is the first time since the establishment of the lung transplant program, back in 2002, that a staffing issue with perfusionists has caused a procedure to be cancelled.

Day says the incident has put the man through emotional turmoil.

“[He’s been waiting] months and months. He’s been on the list for quite a while, and his diagnosis is terminal, so he definitely needs it. It’s pretty shocking that it’s come to this,” Day said.

“But there’s been red flags on perfusionists since 2002.”

Last week, Day noted a 2024 survey by the Canadian Society of Clinical Perfusionists to his fellow MLAs in the Legislature, showing that 12 perfusionists working in Canada have left for the U.S.; 12 per cent expect to retire in the next two years; and “a significant 38% of perfusionists aged 40 or younger indicated their intent to leave the profession in the coming years.”

“We only had 30 perfusionists in B.C. as of 2002, and I’m trying to get the most recent numbers of how many are currently practicing in British Columbia, but it’s clearly not nearly enough,” Day said.

Day acknowledged there’s no easy fix to the problem, with health-care workers of all stripes in short supply in B.C.

He pointed to higher salaries and lower tax rates in other jurisdictions, such as the United States, that make for much more enticing careers for many specialists, including perfusionists — and he said that’s going to make the BC NDP’s plan to poach health-care workers from the U.S. much harder.

“They’re making near double south the border, and they have much better-equipped facilities to practice [in] down there, so that’s not really a solution. We’re going to have a global shortage of trained medical personnel,” he said.

“We’re all competing for the same group of individuals. And unfortunately, that group of individuals is going to go where they have the best chance and the most modern facilities to practice in.”

In a statement to 1130 NewsRadio, Health minister Josie Osborne said it’s frustrating for people to go through experiences like the Vancouver Island man’s.

“I can only imagine how difficult that must have been to have that surgery cancelled at the last minute. This again just speaks to the urgency of the work that we are doing right now in B.C. to attract specialists,” she said.

“We need to build a cadre of health-care workers across all specialties to ensure these life-saving surgeries can take place and people can get the health care that they need when and where they need it.”

Osborne’s response was a near-verbatim answer to the one she gave Day last week during Question Period — and Day says that’s not a unique occurrence.

“She’s pretty much been giving the same response to any questions she’s been answering, saying they’re working on it and they’re aware of the issue. Unfortunately, we don’t see that. And they desperately need to take some more urgent action — especially on the staffing shortages,” he said.

“Because this isn’t just nurses and it’s not just doctors. It’s clinicians, opticians, everybody down the line that supports health care in this province. And we have a retiring population now, so this problem is going to get progressively worse over the next five to ten years.”

Day said he knows Osborne and has confidence she’s looking at her mandate — which he said essentially requires her to “rebuild the health-care system” — with urgency.

“But we desperately need to relook at the way health care is delivered here. It’s absolutely a mess at the moment.