Province boosts website in hopes of connecting B.C. patients with family doctors

The province is upgrading a government website to improve access to family doctors for an estimated one million British Columbians without longitudinal healthcare providers.

The HealthLink BC website has had a “matching” service for much of the province for years, but has now added all of Vancouver Coastal Health so everyone has the option to get on a waiting list for a general practitioner through its Health Connect Registry; previously it had excluded Vancouver, the North Shore, Sea-to-Sky and Delta areas. 

At the official announcement, the health minister told journalists that “there are more than 900 new primary care providers -- doctors and nurse practitioners -- accepting new patients.”

When pressed by CTV News as to whether that was a realistic number, Adrian Dix defended the statistic and said that while some health-care practitioners new to primary care were taking over patient panels from retiring doctors.

"The new (compensation) model is bringing people back to family practice,” he said.

The province had negotiated a new payment model for family doctors last year, to better compensate them for time spent with patients and not just per visit.

Shortly before noon on Wednesday, the Doctors of BC notified its members that the existing Health Connect Registry will expand by allowing family doctors to input and update information about how many patients they’re able to accept as space becomes available.

“Doctors will not be forced to increase their panel size,” notes the bulletin to members. “The final decision on whether a new patient is a good match is left with the physician and the patient.”

Dr. Ramneek Dosanjh, past-president of Doctors of BC attended the announcement and pointed out “I don't think it's healthy to force relationships on anybody.”

Sources tell CTV News a full-time general practitioner can have a patient panel between 800 and 2,500, depending on the complexity of their needs and how many regular appointments they require.

Dosanjh did not directly answer a question about whether there were enough family doctors in BC to attach every patient who wants one, noting there are roughly 6,000 and they have a recruitment drive underway.

Other doctors have told CTV News they could increase their patient load up to 25 per cent if they had access to physician assistance or the province cut back the paperwork and red tape.

“If we're able to streamline our job and reduce some of the bureaucracy, we could each perhaps carry more patients,” said Dr. Jennifer Lush, who has a family practice in Saanich.

She also questioned whether the Healthlink matching system is effective.

“Is that really accomplishing what it's supposed to?” she asked. “Are we seeing the numbers of people on that registry go down as they become attached? And if they're not becoming attached? Why is that?”

CTV News posed a similar question to the health minister, asking why he was doubling down on a system that had been active for years as the number of unattached British Columbians had ballooned to one million people.

“These issues are not going to be resolved overnight,” said Dix, who claimed that last year thousands of people did get a family doctor and the latest data suggested about 900,000 people don’t have a primary care provider.