A helicopter company that transports a Port McNeil doctor to a remote First Nations community stopped service this month because of an unpaid $75,000 bill. Peter Barratt, 75, co-owner of West Coast Helicopters, began transporting doctors to the First Nations communities of Kingcome Inlet, Kyuquot and Wuikinuxv about 44 years ago. When payments for flights to the Wuikinuxv Nation in Rivers Inlet ran out in February, Barratt called the doctor. “I said, ‘I don’t know how long we can go on with this,’” Barratt said, recalling his conversation with Dr. Prean Armogam. Armogam, which fully supports the helicopter company, said there are two infants – including one who has been in hospital for months – with young mothers in the Wuikinuxv Nation who need immediate care. There is family and community support, of course, but there are no nurses in the community, she said. It was scheduled to fly on July 7. “I needed to see this baby physically and I didn’t see him last week,” said Armogam, who has been providing health care to the people of the Wuikinuxv Nation for 16 years. Historically, Island Health paid for the doctors’ flights to all three communities, but more recently the province pays for those in Kyuquot, with the First Nations Health Authority paying for Kingcome Inlet and Wuikinuxv. Kingcome Inlet and Kyuquot are in Island Health’s service area. Wuikinuxv is owned by the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, but residents have access to medical care on Vancouver Island. Since Barratt brought the problem to Armogam, there has been much correspondence with the First Nations Health Authority and others, but no resolution. “I blame the First Nations Health Authority, the Vancouver Island Health Authority and the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority because none of the three own this orphaned First Nations community,” Armogam said. “None of these three organizations could figure out how to actually make the service work.” Island Health said Friday that the Wuikinuxv Nation is not in its service area. “Island Health is not the primary coordinating agency for this doctor’s service,” the health authority said. “Vancouver Coastal and the FNHA will need some time to look into it.” On Saturday, the First Nations Health Authority said it would review the situation on Monday when the appropriate people were available. Barratt said he’s not cutting the service because his team doesn’t want to fly there, “we’re cutting it because we can’t afford to fly there.” “These things are not cheap to run,” he said. “I’m telling you, our profit margins are about two percent, maybe.” He said one doctor flies from Port Alice to Kyuquot, two doctors fly from Alert Bay to Kingcome Inlet and Armogam flies from Port McNeill to Wuikinuxv. “Between the three of them, they owe us $75,000.” Barratt said $49,000 of that had been overdue for months. “I don’t know who’s paying… it sounds like they’re fighting each other. Looks like they are changing the charge. We don’t know what’s going on.” Dr. Granger Avery, 76, a retired physician and past president of the BC Medical Association, arrived in Port McNeill in 1974. “It became very apparent to me after two or three years that people were arriving from the most remote communities with things they should have dealt with much earlier,” Avery said Saturday. Given the difficulty of traveling from these areas, he quickly decided that he had to go to them. He approached Indigenous Services Canada, which agreed to pay for the flights. Avery said the hands-on care that doctors provide in remote communities is vital to both patients and doctors — seeing the patient’s pallor, feeling the patient’s weak pulse or arms, seeing the way they speak or see him in their home environment. “There are signs that an experienced doctor will find and think about and sometimes it’s important and sometimes it’s nothing – but if you’re not there, you can’t do that,” he said. Tribal Director Paul Wiley said the chief and council plan to talk about the ongoing struggles to get adequate medical care in the community. [email protected]
