Bypassing the closest hospital: Why the worst injuries aren’t treated in Surrey

When 17-year-old Ethan Bespflug was fatally stabbed on King George Boulevard last week, first responders took him nine kilometres away to New Westminster even though Surrey Memorial Hospital was less than four blocks away.

When 17-year-old Ethan Bespflug was fatally stabbed on King George Boulevard last week, first responders took him nine kilometres away to New Westminster even though Surrey Memorial Hospital was less than four blocks away.

In fact, any person with a penetrating injury to the torso and attended to by paramedics in the Fraser Health Authority is taken to Royal Columbian Hospital as it’s the only Level 1 trauma centre approved for treatment of the most serious injuries.

That came as a surprise to Bespflug’s mother, who was satisfied with the care her teen had at RCH last week, and wants to see top-tier medical treatment available at Surrey Memorial Hospital. 

“With all the acts of violence, that hospital in a large city it needs to have that,” said Holly Indridson. “It's overrun, they're short-staffed constantly, like severely.”

Fraser Health is British Columbia’s largest health authority, serving 1.9 million people with a dozen hospitals from Burnaby to Hope. Royal Columbian is the only one with Level 1 trauma teams and resources, and while Abbotsford is Level 2; SMH can only provide Level 4 trauma care.

Physicians at Surrey Memorial are deeply frustrated, because while Bespflug is a recent and jarring example given how close he was to them, they’ve often seen patients sent to RCH across large distances through considerable congestion – sometimes even going directly past them on King George.

“Time is everything in a trauma case and ideally intervention needs to be done -- if there's a loss of vital signs -- within 15 minutes in a penetrating trauma to the chest and that time becomes increasingly difficult the deeper you go into Surrey,” said Dr. Amol Lail, an emergency physician in the community.