Photo: Castanet
Options for Sexual Health offer various sexual and reproductive health services.
The organization that runs 52 clinics supporting reproductive and sexual health across B.C. may close the majority of its locations without the support of the province.
Insufficient funding and financial challenges has Options for Sexual Health facing the high likelihood of closing up to 83 per cent of its 52 clinics.
Those clinics serve an estimated 14,000 people with a variety of sexual and reproductive health services, and there are 13 in the Southern Interior alone, including locations in Kelowna, Penticton, Vernon, Lumby, Salmon Arm, Sicamous, Grand Forks, Trail, Nelson, Naksup, Kaslo, Fernie and Cranbrook. In 2010, Interior Health pulled sexual health services out of public health.
The province, in the meantime, says its working toward a solution.
“The Ministry of Health and the Provincial Health Services Authority continue to work with Options for Sexual Health and other partners to find a pathway forward to support the delivery of care,” the Ministry of Health said in a statement.
What that may be remains to be seen.
The president of the board of directors for Options, Kaye Hare, said in a recent email that the organization needs $800,000 for the next fiscal year to keep just 50 per cent of their clinics open, though without bridge funding there would be a greater number of closures. The clinics would also look at reduced service hours and laying off the majority of its clinic RNs, coordinators, and admin staff, Hare said.
Options has been operating under sustained financial strain for 12 years and minimal core funding increases have not been able to keep up with the rising costs of healthcare, inflation, and the increasing cost of living.
“With no substantive increases to our core funding during this time, rising healthcare costs, inflation, and the growing cost of living have outpaced our ability to meet the demands of need for our health care services,” reads an open letter posted on the organization’s website.
“Additionally, while nursing wages in BC have risen, Options has not been able to match these increases due to insufficient funding.”
The organization is asking that those who see value in the service reach out to the province.
Options clinics are the only provider of vital sexual and reproductive health services, including birth control, cervical screenings, STI testing and treatment, and more.
In July 2023, the organization was already facing signs of strain that they said at the Kelowna office was facing a shortage of administrative clinical staff, nurses and doctors that has been exacerbated by the pandemic and struggles of the broader healthcare system.
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