‘We need action’: B.C. doctor says province can improve health care even without more funding

B.C. does not have to wait for more money from Ottawa to begin making changes to address the health care crisis, according to a family doctor who says action is needed right now.

There’s no doubt more investment in family practice would make a big impact, says Victoria-based Dr. Jennifer Lush. However, she’s frustrated the recent meeting of Canada’s premiers ended with the focus remaining on increasing the bottom line.

Read more: Feds, provinces need to ‘sit down like adults’ on health spending: B.C. premier

“It’s a case of not necessarily more dollars, but wise spending of the dollars that we have,” she argued. “We need to trim down our administration costs and we need to provide overhead support to family doctors who are struggling to keep the doors open.”

Lush feels B.C. needs to move away from a focus on urgent primary care centres as a stop-gap. She calls this a patent failure at attaching patients and have in some cases driven family practices to close.

She also believes there needs to be more “equitable compensation.”

“Right now, longitudinal family medicine is the poorest-compensated field in medicine, and yet it’s one of the most important,” she said.

Lush believes investing in this area makes financial sense.

“It’s one of the most cost effective fields of medicine. It keeps people out of the emergency rooms and reduces hospitalization costs. So it would be wise to invest funds that we currently have into longitudinal family doctors who will care for patients the way they need to be cared for, rather than investing in an administration and an expensive experimental models.”

Canada’s premiers were hoping this latest meeting would result in the federal government increasing transfer payments for health care. Instead, the prime minster refused to even meet with provincial leaders and passed the issue to his ministers.

“The time for conversation is over, we need action,” Lush said, adding addressing the health care crisis should be a non-partisan issue.

“Without question, all of us sooner or later are going to need to access health care. So all the politicians need to put aside their political differences and work together to ensure that Canadians and particularly British Columbians are getting the care that they need and deserve.”

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In a rare, united front, Canada’s premiers have expressed their anger with the federal government over what they call a lack of communication and a lack of health care funding to keep the system from crumbling.

The premiers want Ottawa to permanently increase its share of funding and raise it from 22 to 35 per cent.

With files from Sonia Aslam