B.C. family doctors push for meeting with new health minister

Family doctors in B.C. are pushing for a meeting with the new health minister, saying addressing the crisis in primary care can’t wait until three months from now when the legislature is back in session.

When Premier David Eby announced his new cabinet, he replaced Adiran Dix – who served as health minister since 2017 – with Josie Osborne.

Dr. Jennifer Lush, a board member of the B.C. College of Family Physicians, says addressing the primary care crisis in the province requires urgent action.

“We simply cannot allow another doctor's office to close as a result of government inaction,” she said Thursday. “We need the changes to be made now -- and we would love to meet with Minister Osborne.”

The BC College of Family Physicians wants the Eby government to make good on its campaign promises, noting 40 per cent of family doctors in B.C. are retiring or scaling back their practise in the next three to five years.

“The time has come to make concrete changes that are going to help reverse that,” said Lush.

Practitioners say the province shouldn’t stall on honouring a pledge to ditch the requirement for employees to provide sick notes.

“Immediately we would like to see a reduction in the administrative burden," Lush said.

"Thirty per cent of a family physician's day is spent doing administrative tasks and not seeing patients.”

Osborne, for her part, says a meeting is coming soon, as is a plan to eliminate sick notes. However, no date has been set for either.

“We need their advice, we need their guidance, we need to make sure that we do this right – and eliminating sick notes will increase the amount of time that doctors can spend with people,” she said Thursday.

B.C. Conservative health critic Anna Kindy echoes the doctors' concerns, noting the strain the shortage is putting on emergency rooms. “People... they're coming in to get their skin cancer diagnosed in emergency. That's a fact,” she said.

Doctors also want meaningful steps to help attract new general practitioners to B.C., including the promised streamlining of credentialing for foreign trained doctors, as well as efforts to retain those already here.