As of 8 a.m. Thursday, the maternity unit at White Rock’s Peace Arch Hospital will be closed, again, for four days because of what the Fraser Health Authority (FHA) describes as “unexpected departures.”

This is the fourth time this year that the hospital has had to deal with a temporary closure. The ward is expected to reopen on Feb. 23 at 8 a.m., meanwhile, patients will be diverted to other health-care facilities.

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This is not just a problem affecting one hospital. There have also been multiple closures of the same unit at Ridge Meadows Hospital over the past couple of months.

Doctors of BC President Dr. Adam Thompson tells 1130 NewsRadio that people can expect more service gaps at hospitals around the province as B.C. struggles with a major shortage of frontline health-care workers.

“This is a province-wide problem. We’re seeing a shortage of OBGYN providers, but also a shortage of midwives, maternity nurses, as well as family physicians doing less maternity work than they used to. So, there are a number of different challenges that are reaching a point where we’re struggling to provide care in the province, sadly,” said Thompson.

“We’re just not producing enough physicians. Full-stop.”

Thompson explains that B.C. needs to plan and implement a way to stabilize and end the rolling closures, but that hasn’t happened yet.

He says one of the biggest obstacles is graduating more doctors.

“We’re just not producing enough physicians. Full-stop. There’s been a problem in producing enough physicians right across Canada for a number of years — to keep up with an aging population and to keep up with population growth we’ve had. It’s generally not keeping up with the pace of change in society and the pace of change in medicine with physician supply.”

He acknowledges that maternity ward closures, however temporary, make parents-to-be anxious.

“Unfortunately, health care problems are not quick-fix solutions. We need stabilization plans in the short to medium term, and longer-term solutions around producing more OBGYN’s and more health-care providers to support the system. Unfortunately, we will see… more service gaps like this.”

Thompson hopes for the establishment of a committee of stakeholders, including the provincial government and health-care workers, to address the problem.

First on the committee’s agenda, he says, would be recruitment and retention.

“But also looking at, ‘How do we increase mobility of providers across the province?’ At the moment, if you are credentialed to work in one health authority, you are not able to work in another health authority unless you have credentials there. We need to move to a system where when you have credentialing in one health authority, it covers you for the whole province.”

It’s also important to spread health-care providers around the province, Thompson says, so rural communities aren’t left out.

He urges patients facing service gaps at their local health-care facility not to hesitate to seek care, even if it means being diverted.

Thompson says the issue is one of several which Doctors of BC is worried about right now.

“We’re also seeing a specialist waitlist crisis, which needs addressing,” he explained.

“These are not long-term issues; these are here-and-now problems that we would like to see addressed.”

Fraser Health’s website says it has recruited six OBGYNs to hospitals in the region over the past year, and one new physician is expected to join Peace Arch Hospital this spring.

—With files from Charles Brockman