September

Before I could touch the zwie­back I was reaching for—as my evening meal—the televi­sion interrupted me with news of a plane crash on the Fraser River. BC artist Toni Onley had gone down while practising “touch and go” on the water near the small town of Ruskin. Witnesses reported that he and his aircraft had submerged almost instantly. The shock of the news brought back memories of my friendship with the artist and the several ways our lives had intersected. 

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Lengthy waits for surgery cost Canadian patients a combined $1.08 billion in lost time and productivity in 2011, according to a new report from the Fraser Institute. The report calculates the average value of time lost during the work week at $1144 for each of the estimated 941321 Canadians waiting for treatment in 2011. When considering hours outside the work week, in­cluding evenings and weekends but excluding 8 hours of sleep per night, the estimated cost of waiting jumps to almost $3.29 billion, or about $3490 per patient.

The BC Cancer Agency Centre for the North, slated to open later this year in Prince George, will give residents in northern BC the opportunity to re­ceive radiation therapy in their home region for the first time. The new service will be provided through two state-of-the-art linear accelerators. 

Serving more than 750 patients per year, it will be the sixth regional cancer centre operated by the BC Cancer Agency, an agency of the Provincial Health Services Authority.

The Provincial Health Services Au­thority has received five awards at the 2012 Excellence in BC Health Care Awards—three Gold Apple awards and two Awards of Merit. The awards recognize outstanding health care em­ployees and reward innovation and best practices by BC’s publicly funded health care providers.