“We are in a position to respond,” Dix said at the conference of the Association of Municipalities of K.V.E. in Whistler, after spending a lot of time talking about the province’s response to the pandemic.
“I’ve heard the term health crisis. To be clear: we’ve been in a health care crisis since at least March 2020.”
While Dix argued BC’s response was “the best in the world,” he acknowledged the province was facing a number of challenges with current shortages stemming from an aging and growing population.
To that end, he said, the province needed to train more people, lower barriers to care, make it easier for pharmacists and internationally trained doctors to contribute to the system and make changes to the pay system.
“These are things we can do together,” Dix said.
“We need to be able to say that we are committed to the public health care system.”
Dix says the number of people without a family doctor has risen from about 340,000 in 2003 to 908,000 in 2017 and is expected to be higher this year.
As a “first step”, the government last month announced $118 million in temporary funding to support family doctors.
“The eye-roll emoji”
Dix’s speech drew applause from the mayors and councilors in attendance. But several leaders in smaller communities have said more action is urgently needed. “The time for planning and consultation and exhibitions and meetings is over,” Ashcroft Mayor Barbara Roden said. “I’ve been in health care planning meetings all four years that I’ve been mayor. We hear all the time about the changes to the primary care model and the patient network, how great it’s going to be for Ashcroft. I’m at the point where I’m like, ‘Great . If they’re so great, why haven’t we put them in place yet?” Rodin is part of a group of rural mayors that has formed a coalition to call for changes in health care delivery and has been skeptical of provincial commitments so far. “I think the emoji I use most often is the eye-roll emoji, and it’s totally for that reason,” said Clearwater Mayor Merlin Blackwell, who, after Dix’s speech, talked about how the department Clearwater’s emergency room has been closed 60 times this year. “Adrian Dix and the Department of Health is a top-down organization … we have crisis issues that we can really solve on the ground.”
Short-term solutions are difficult
Dix’s plenary came during a city government conference where much of the time was spent discussing concerns about shortages in affordable housing, mental health providers and doctors, nurses and paramedics. Gabby Wickstrom, mayor of Port McNeil, said “writing a check to write is not going to help the problem.” “If you’re going to throw money at it, I want to see a plan. I want to see exactly what situation it’s going to help fix and how you think those dollars are going to help.” Former health secretary and current councilor George Abbott said “quick fixes are really hard to come by in a system that is usually very resistant to change”. But Abbott raised a number of options, including raising pay, finding ways to bring recently retired health workers back into the workforce and exploring best practices from other provinces on international recruitment of doctors. After the session, Dix said an announcement about ambulance care “probably would have [been] he did… but for the very sad death of the queen.’ And he defended his lack of promises altogether. “What this was was a serious discussion. It was not a stage for announcements,” he said. “I make announcements when we’re ready to do it, when we’ve talked to everyone, when we’ve engaged with everyone, and then we deliver. “It’s not about show, it’s about doing, and that’s why I’m in it.”
