Vancouver Coastal Health wants to charge summer festivals for health care

With the summer festival season approaching, Vancouver Coastal Health has been looking into the cost of medical care at large-scale events in the Sea to Sky corridor.

Last year, VCH spent more than $125,000 on added medical costs related to six separate festivals in the Squamish Valley.

The health authority says it's time for festival organizers to pay more.

"What we're looking for is recognition from the event organizers that it does come at a cost to our services," said Laurie Leith, operations director for the Sea to Sky Corridor for Vancouver Coastal Health.

"It's a cost that is not within our baseline budgeting from the Ministry of Health." 

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Costing analysis concentrated on six events that caused the most pressure on the health authority last summer.

Those events were: the Pemberton Music Festival, the Squamish Music Festival, the extreme cycling event Crankworx, Tough Mudder, the GranFondo and Iron Man.

The amount of money Vancouver Coastal Health put into health services at each of the festivals varied from about $11,000 to $35,000.

"I think ideally [festival organizers] would cover that whole cost to us."

While organizers do hire their own private medical coverage, she says it's not enough.

"The reality of it is that even despite them having onsite medical services, there is a population that will require a higher level of care and advanced medical support."

The extra medical costs come from treating injuries such as broken bones at extreme sport events to dehydration, drug and alcohol overdoses and heat exhaustion at musical festivals.

"Because these events are in a small rural community...," she said using the example of Pemberton, which only has five nursing staff that live and work in the community, "our costs go towards hiring additional staff to come in, working extra hours, our diagnostics or lab staff have to work extended hours or on call, we have to bring in other supplies such as increasing our blood bank capacity."

Last year, VCH used a medical mobile unit at the Squamish Festival and the Crankworx Cycling event in Whistler but based on a cost-benefit analysis, those units will not be used this year.

Leith says Vancouver Coastal Health fully supports the festivals happening, and realizes they are good for the economy and communities, but hopes festival organizers will start to cover the added medical costs.

There's been no detailed conversations with festival organizers about this yet, she says.

"This is pretty new. It hasn't been done. We are pretty unique, the province of B.C., that we have this many mass gathering events in one area. So we're pioneers in looking at costing and looking at how we can work with our event partners."

To hear the full interview listen to the audio labelled VCH wants to charge summer festivals for healthcare