PG Blood Clinic Closes its Doors
Prince George, B.C. – After 17 years of service, the Canadian Blood Services clinic in Prince George will close its doors for good today.
Director of Donor Relations for B.C. and the Yukon David Patterson told 250 News last month the decision to close the clinic was based on a variety of factors “Part of it is relating to costs.” adding “As we look at the costs involved in running our Prince George operations, we consider that we are a publicly funded organization and really have a mandate to use those funds as effectively as possible.”
Prince George is one of three permanent sites that will close (the other two are located in the Maritimes) along with mobile blood clinics in 16 communities across Canada.
The decision to close the clinic in Prince George will affect 13 part-time workers, four casual employees, and 50 volunteers.
Predictably, he says the reaction from the community has been negative.
“They’ve been disappointed that we went down the path of making this decision to close the clinic,” says Patterson. “Certainly it’s not been a good news story from a community perspective and I would say people have not been shy about sharing those concerns with us.”
He says they’ll be open from 10 to 6 today and acknowledges it will be difficult.
“It’s an emotional day for both our clinic and their donors. We thought of it almost as an open-house as well,” he says. “We’ve had lots of people reach out about wanting to come and say good bye to the dedicated staff.”
Holly Broderick has been the clinic supervisor since the clinic opened its doors and says the situation has been “upsetting for everyone,” adding “we don’t want to see our clinic close here, it’s been a service that we feel is really needed in northern B.C.”
She says an outpouring of sorrow from the community has helped soften the blow though.
“We’ve had many donors come in and bring us flowers and balloons and thank-you cards and it’s been really touching. It makes us feel good about what we’ve done the past 17 years.”
Moving forward, Patterson says the nearest place in B.C. for anyone from Prince George to donate blood will be Kamloops.
He adds the access to blood supplies if needed, will not change, as all donated blood is sent to Vancouver for processing and distribution to hospitals throughout B.C.
Comments
Thank you to the CBS staff. They are a great, dedicated crew. A loss to PG for certain.
Why is it a sad day for PG? For all the belly-aching about money spent on unnecessary things, this should be applauded.
Even Canada Blood Services says they’ve been collecting too much blood. Ian Mumford, the Chief Supply Chain Officer states, “We have more than enough capacity to collect the amount of blood that we need to meet the needs of hospitals, however, it is expensive for us to operate more clinics than we actually need to have.”
Part of the reason is that less blood is required during surgery with more robotics being utilized. Take prostate cancer for example; what you used to take 3 units of blood during surgery, now only requires one.
PG won’t be without access to the blood needed. Does it matter whether it’s collected here or not? If a local emergency were ever to rear it’s ugly head, I’m quite sure they can put together a mobile unit quickly.
Further to your post Gecko – which begs the question, how much money did they spend on advertising to get us to donate blood, when apparently they have more than they need?
I have Hemochromatosis I have to get rid of my RH-O negative blood or I could die. I was at the blood clinic to day to ask where the equipment was going and was told it would be shipped south. I asked if they could donate a couple of the chairs to our Hospital as they are better than what we have and also could some of the people losing jobs be sent the our Hospital as they will be taking over this task. The fellow I talked to said it was not up to him. So who is it up to?? maybe our Hospital should speak up before its all shipped south.
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