Doctors of BC in the Media

The BC government is bringing back masks in all health-care settings. Global News has obtained a memo sent from the Ministry of Health to health-care providers on the plan that is expected to be announced Thursday at a press conference. Doctors of BC president, Dr Joshua Greggain, said with back to school “inevitably there's an exchange of viruses, and that includes COVID.”

BC's health minister said the province's emergency rooms are seeing unusually high levels of patient demand in a trend that may be a "new normal." Doctors of BC president Dr Joshua Greggain welcomed Dix's visit and attention to Surrey Memorial but said doctors at the facility and across BC are still feeling stretched. "Our physicians still feel very much it is a very busy emergency room," Greggain told CBC News. "The hospital is still very busy and so there's still lots of work to do." 

BC has expanded access to a site that matches doctors with one of the 890,000 people who don't have a family physician in the province. Richard Zussman explains.

Doctors of B.C. president Joshua Greggain, who is based in Victoria, wrote to physician members this week to say the association has been working to streamline the re-referral process, which he called burdensome to referring practitioners, consultants and patients. The requirement for re-referrals forced patients with a family physician to book appointments just to request a referral to see their specialist again. Specialists’ offices were unable to book subsequent visits after six months until they received the required re-referral paperwork from the family doctor or other practitioner. The result was more work for increasingly busy doctors. “It’s one of the burdens from an administration of practice that has beleaguered both family physicians and specialists,” said Greggain. “This was one thing we could change and find some common interests.” Read more...

Health Minister Adrian Dix is facing a “staggering” health care crisis as dozens of physicians at five BChospitals have come forward to raise the alarm about unsafe conditions they say are putting patients at risk. The latest open letter was from women’s health providers at Surrey Memorial Hospital who say inadequate resources are compromising patient care and were a factor in the death of a newborn baby in 2020.  Dr Joshua Greggain, president of Doctors of BC, confirmed there’s been an increase in patients being admitted to hospital with no doctor attached. “That’s not a safe way to provide care,” he said. Greggain said while a shortage of hospitalists is one factor putting stress on emergency departments, other factors include the number of people coming to emergency rooms because of the opioid crisis, the mental health crisis and the shortage of family doctors. Read more...

British Columbia’s health minister is responding to bombshell allegations from a longtime emergency room doctor about the “crisis” at Surrey Memorial Hospital. Dr Urbain Ip, now a clinical assistant professor at UBC’s Department of Emergency Medicine and the former medical director at Surrey Memorial, told Global News Tuesday he wouldn’t send his own family members to the facility.  Addressing the issues plaguing BC’s emergency rooms will take more than one solution, according to the president of Doctors of BC. “If the solution was easy, it would be done already,” Dr Joshua Greggain said. Greggain said the pressure being felt at Surrey’s ER and others around the province is a symptom of bigger problems throughout the primary care system. Read more...

BC Health Minister Adrian Dix is pushing back against claims that Surrey Memorial Hospital (SMH) is in “crisis.” Speaking on Wednesday, Dix says the NDP is trying to undo years of neglect under the previous Liberal government. “Fraser Health was particularly badly treated by the previous government. The idea that you would do less MRIs in Fraser Health with 800,000 more people than in Vancouver Coastal Health just showed a secondary priority, and so we’ve changed that,” he said. Dix’s comments come after doctors in Surrey Memorial Hospital’s Emergency Room issued a scathing letter Monday describing what they’re calling a “crisis” at the facility. Released in response to the Doctors of BC Section of Emergency Medicine news last week, the physicians, who have not included their names, say they are “compelled to inform the public of the unsafe conditions that have come to exist in our hospital, and what has been told to the community is incomplete.” Read more...

The “near catastrophic" situation at Langley Memorial Hospital's emergency department, first reported by CTV News this week, is just one example of what BC doctors say is a provincial crisis. The “dire” and “unsafe” conditions in the Langley department were highlighted in a memo sent by Dr Jeff Plante in which he urged his colleagues in Fraser Health not to send patients to the hospital, saying the facility was “overrun” due to an influx of patients and that staffing shortages on wards have led to very sick people being warehoused in the ED. On Wednesday, Doctors of BC issued a statement saying the issues raised in the memo are not isolated to Langley and that they are shining a spotlight on the untenable and potentially dangerous situation unfolding at hospitals across the province. Read more...

Canada’s biggest testing and diagnostics company is offering “various diagnostic tests” for long COVID to British Columbians, even though the national health agency clearly states the condition isn’t detectible via testing. A section of the LifeLabs website titled “long COVID testing” suggests people with post-infection symptoms bring a guide to their doctor to order an array of tests, which the company indicates are almost all covered by the provincial Medical Services Plan. The president of Doctors of BC agrees with the national public health agency, and pointed out the testing recommended is so broad – it’s essentially useless. “What they're suggesting is very, very all-inclusive and not necessarily a diagnostic for anything, including long COVID,” said Dr Josh Greggain.

Doctors of BC says it fully supports a recent proposal to bring in a new national standard for medical licensing, although it’s skeptical about the feasibility of the suggested strategy.

Doctors of BC President Joshua Greggain says the organization is in full support of Poilievre’s recent call to improve and speed up healthcare professionals’ integration around Canada. “National licensure and portability between province would be a really good thing to help the physician supply as well as the nurses,” he said.

Greggain adds he does believe national licensing and portability between provinces would help the healthcare worker shortage, but for it to happen he says it would take national collaboration, which is tough to do in the current landscape.

More than half of BC's full-time family physicians have switched to the new fee structure, billed as a way to increase people's access to a family doctor and stop those in family practice from fleeing a system that was burning them out. “I think we’ve built an attractive model so that patients will get family physicians in due time,” says Doctors of BC President Dr Josh Greggain. 

Financial adviser Remi Tran, whose 70-year-old father died of liver cancer after a months-long wait to see an oncologist, hopes today’s budget announcement for health care will improve outcomes and spare other families what his endured. The province is expected to unveil how much of its budget and a near $6-billion surplus will go toward health care. Doctors of BC President Joshua Greggain, said great improvements have been made in physician compensation, and strategies for getting more internationally trained doctors working here and training more doctors and nurses. But there is also a need for more immediate solutions, such as licensing doctors and nurses at a national level, and possibly adding physician assistants...

The new framework allows physicians to scrap the current fee-for-service system that saw them paid a flat rate per patient visit and be paid instead for a range of duties that come with the job. "I believe it's the most significant reform to primary care in my lifetime in the history of the public health-care system," Health Minister Adrian Dix said at a news conference outlining the changes. "Today is a new day for family physicians to have choice to provide the care that they have always wanted to do and have not been able to," said Doctors of B.C. president Dr. Joshua Greggain, calling the model "transformational." 

The BC government, in partnership with Doctors of BC, has released details about its new payment model for family doctors, a plan that could reshape primary care across the province.

“We really feel like by lifting up family medicine, our primary care, and leaning into team-based care, the expectation and the aspiration is that everything will get better in due time,” he said. “This is an opportunity to transform the health-care system by simply flicking a switch," says Doctors of BC President Dr Joshua Greggain.