Community members received a mail-out last weekend from the United Church Health Services Society (UCHSS) detailing the termination of their affiliation agreement with Vancouver Coastal Health. The transfer of all programs and services from UCHSS to VCH will be complete by June 2014.
Although VCH’s present agreement with the UCHSS dates back to 2001, the United Church has provided health care on B.C.’s central coast for 124 years. For the first 60 years it was largely funded by the church. In 1889, Dr. Albert Bolton traveled by boat throughout the Central Coast offering medicine and surgeries. He started the first hospital in River’s Inlet, and in 1902 a new seven-bed hospital was built in Bella Bella.
In 1927, the embattled Bella Coola Hospital Board asked the United Church of Canada to take over its operations. Fast-forward to the 1990s, when local hospital boards were fighting to keep local, community control of health. In 2001 the province proposed streamlining administration into ‘super-boards,’ and the denominational facilities, which included the United Church hospitals, managed to retain local, community control with their own hospital boards in affiliation with a health authority.
Caitlin Thompson
Coast Mountain News
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