Ashcroft sits in the middle of a 90 square kilometre catchment area that includes several different communities including Spences Bridge, Ashcroft, Cache Creek, Clinton, The Ashcroft Indian Band, and 5 local Indian bands. The population of this area as of the 2017 census is roughly 5000 people.

In 2015 Ashcroft was down to two doctors, then one doctor, then for a brief period no doctors, which made having a doctors difficult to maintain, let alone a 24hr a day 7 days a week hospital. So at that time, the around the clock model was removed, and after a new set of doctors were brought in, the emergency section was turned in a weekend emergency only health site. What that means is that as well as having a doctor’s office 5 days a week, the emergency room is open from Friday night at 6pm, until 6am Monday morning. This has been the model since 2015.

This Ashcroft Community Hub video is with Interior Health Representative Lisa Zetes-Zanata, Ashcroft Mayor Barbara Roden and the Fraser Nicola Liberal MLA Jackie Tegart. It interviews all of these women separately but asks them all the same questions to see how many different sides of the story there really are. Also the answers provided are not edited in any way, and no questions are omitted to any person interviewed.

The interviews shown in this portion of the interviews talk about why Ashcroft is no longer a hospital based on Ashcroft’s location and population in the catchment area. The questions covered in this video are:

What is the are that the Hospital is suppose to serve? How does that compare to other areas in the Interior Health Mandate? Is Lillooet Emergency open 24hrs? If so, how is the situation in Lillooet different from Ashcroft? Additionally, in comparison what does the Lytton Health services situation look like? (Lytton and Lillooet are also smaller towns with their own health sites just outside of the Ashcroft Catchment area.)

“Lillooet is different as they seem to have the ability to keep doctors…” “…Lillooet is that much further away from Kamloops and potentially services a larger area…””…the doctors really like the lifestyle, really like the community. And that has in part enabled them to keep an emergency department…” “Lytton is open 24hrs, because they have a larger base of physicians…”

Stay tuned for part two: Goals and Challenges.