New actions will make sure everyone in B.C. gets connected to a family doctor or nurse practitioner

BURNABY – David Eby announced new commitments that will connect more people to family doctors, faster, with the goal of making sure everyone has access to a family doctor or nurse practitioner.
“People need more doctors and shorter waits so routine conditions don’t go untreated, and so they don’t have to wait at the hospital,” said Eby. “​We’ve taken action to connect thousands of people to family doctors faster than ever. It’s making a difference, and these new actions will connect more people faster. We can have a province where everyone has access to care.”
In less than two years as premier, David Eby has added over 800 new family doctors and connected almost 250,000 people to a family doctor or nurse practitioner. Another 160,000 are expected to be connected in the next six months. Eby is also taking action to add 128 spaces to the UBC medical school, build a new medical school in Surrey to train the next generation of doctors, and break down barriers to bring internationally trained healthcare workers off the sidelines and into our hospitals and clinics.”
John Rustad’s old government promised "A GP for me" – that every British Columbian who wants a family doctor would have access to one by 2015. Instead of following through, they rejected building a second medical school in Surrey and left 900,000 people without a family doctor – 250,000 more than before they made their promise.
“John Rustad had a slogan but not a plan. For 20 years, he has backed health care cuts that left more and more people without a family doctor,” said Eby. “He’s been clear he’ll hand big tax breaks to big oil companies and make the rest of us pay for it with longer waits and worse care. At a time when we are finally starting to turn a corner, that’s a risk nobody can afford.”

David Eby and the BC NDP team will take new actions that will allow family doctors to focus more time on their patients:

• Allowing pharmacists to test and prescribe for more common conditions. We will expand when pharmacists can prescribe medications, refer and offer testing for routine conditions–like strep throat, and referrals to support the new pharmacist prescribing scope of practice, like UTI testing or renal function. This means routine illnesses can be tested for and treated, which frees up primary care providers’ time for more patients.
• Reducing time-consuming paperwork for doctors. We will work with experts in the healthcare system to identify and eliminate tedious and outdated processes that take too much time at the doctor’s office. This includes eliminating doctors' notes for occasional sick days, improving the referral system to get people into see a specialist faster, and working on a common approach to finally end the use of the fax machine for renewing medication.
• Getting qualified medical professionals off the sidelines. We will provide immediate provisional licences for doctors, nurses, and midwives trained in Canada. The professionals trained in comparable regions globally will get those same provisional licences within six weeks. We will also improve processing times overall and provide more transparency on licensing timelines, which will help us with international recruitment efforts.
• Recruiting and empowering more physician assistants. We will work to add more physician assistants and expand the range of services they provide. PAs help doctors move quicker, see more patients, and focus on more complex issues by performing patient exams, ordering laboratory and diagnostic tests, and prescribing some medications.