BC Cancer shifted the organization’s priority from excellence in cancer control to fiscal management, leading to the growing waiting times and staff burnout now plaguing the system, according to four former heads of the agency.
BC Cancer is a provincial, government-funded treatment and research organization, with six regional cancer centres in the province. The agency once had its own board of directors and a direct line to B.C.’s Ministry of Health. And it also had what Dr. Sutcliffe described as “a level of freedom to exercise strategic decisions” about its path forward.
“We would have been considered the pre-eminent agency in the 2000s, and I think now we would be average,” Dr. Sutcliffe said. “I didn’t believe I could actually meaningfully do anything constructive to change cancer control and outcomes in B.C., because those decisions were no longer within my purview,” he said.
“What are the innovative changes in medicine that are going to lead to improved cancer control rates for the population of B.C.?” Dr. Sutcliffe said. “That’s a different question from, ‘Can we operate 24-hour chemotherapy, radiation therapy and acute care services?’” “I’m not sure that’s the key problem, or that a redesign of the management structure is necessarily what we need. But I know we need more oncologists and more technologists. And we’re training more. But it’s a pressure point, no question about it.”“I think it is fair to say that in ’04, ’03, BC Cancer was described as a leader and, in the following 10 to 12 years, they lost that,” he said.
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