Pay rollback could hurt hospital care
Posted February 15, 2012 11:53 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – About 50 clinical pharmacists from hospitals around the lower mainland took a strong message to the board of Vancouver Coastal Health, Wednesday.
They told a public forum that planned pay cuts will force some of them to leave their jobs. In 2006 hospital pharmacists got a temporary market adjustment pay raise of 14 per cent to compete with community pharmacy pay rates.
Tila Pelletier works at Vancouver General Hospital and says the province is removing that lift, April 1st. She wants the health authority to act as an advocate, and speak out against the roll back.
“This will affect patient care. This will affect the outcomes that we know the board cares about: length of stay, re-admissions, and costs of health care,” says Pelletier.
Vancouver Coastal Health President & CEO David Ostrow says pharmacists play a vital role, but their contract talks are with the Health Employers Association, not the health authority.
“They certainly are very important in preventing complications related to medications and interactions of medications because they understand medications better than most other health care professionals,” says Ostrow. “We absolutely value them.”
Pelletier says they may be valued, but their pay will fall behind that of their counterparts at community pharmacies.
“It’s in effect a 15 per cent roll back of clinical pharmacists’ wage, which I think will hamper the ability of pharmacists to care for patients because we will lose our best pharmacists,” warns Pelletier.
