Our Care BC Final Report
We at BC Health Care Matters support the Our Care Initiative as it aligns very closely with the mandate and values that guide our work. We were honoured to have been invited to its wrap up event at the end of June, 2023, in Vancouver, and are happy to share the full report with the public.
The Our Care report calls for many changes that we at BCHCM have been calling for since our organization’s creation. Most importantly, it lists two recommendations that we have believed from the start are vital for the improvement of the healthcare system.
They are:
Establish a Patient Advocacy Organization (PAO) that supports consultation on provincial legislation, champions transparency, and ensures accountability
Create an independent, publicly funded education campaign
about primary care
BCHCM is a Patient Advocacy Organization that champions transparency and accountability in all our work, and that holds our elected and non-elected officials to account. We know how effective an organization like us can be. Through BCHCM’s campaigns we have educated the public on: compensation for Family Physicians, inequalities in access to healthcare, the value of primary care, the value of preventative medicine, the need for safe work environments and the role of the patient. BCHCM has led the way since January of 2022 in fulfilling the aforementioned recommendations the Our Care panel knows is NEEDED. Through our actions we have achieved results that support the importance and effectiveness of these recommendations.
BCHCM looks forward to opportunities where we can expand upon the work we have already done and provide a vehicle organization to get these recommendations underway, in order to reform BC’s healthcare system.
Some of the other recommendations that parallel our calls to action are:
Establish a central medical data platform for clinicians and
patients to access electronic medical recordsOffer flexible modes of care including, at minimum, in-clinic,
video, phone, and secure messaging. Virtual care should
complement, not replace, in-person careIncrease the number of primary care clinicians by, for example: reducing licensing barriers for clinicians trained
out-of-province and expanding the use of professionals under
physician supervisionCommission independent, third-party monitoring and
evaluation of resources expended on primary care initiatives
to measure impacts and outcomes
Our Care is a national initiative (https://www.ourcare.ca) to engage the public about the future of primary care in Canada.
The Our Care Initiative has had deep dialogues with members of the public in five provinces across Canada. In the Spring they convened 31 randomly selected people who live in BC to understand their specific experiences of British Columbia's healthcare system and more importantly, how we can do better. They spent 30+ hours learning and deliberating about primary care and have come to a consensus on a series of compelling recommendations to help inform future primary care policy planning.
