Improving Access to Acute Care Services

In order to improve access to acute care services, the Doctors of BC calls on the provincial government to:

• Establish modeling for the supply of functional acute care beds based on clinically appropriate standards. These standards should reflect the realities of the practice setting and must be developed in collaboration and with input from practicing physicians, representative of and accountable to their colleagues.
• Ensure that modeling for the supply of functional acute care beds is flexible enough to account for changes in population growth, demographics, patient acuity, technology, geography, and seasonal variations.
• Provide the necessary infrastructure to ensure patients timely access to all acute care services, including a greater supply of functional acute care beds.
• Support effective management of functional acute care beds in conjunction with increasing their supply.
• Sufficiently resource community-based care (e.g., chronic disease management, primary care providers, home and community care) to ensure that functional acute care beds are used appropriately.
• Provide regular public reports on the number of functional acute care beds by care types (e.g., medical, surgical, obstetrical, paediatric, psychiatric, critical care) and on the progress towards satisfying wait time benchmarks for acute care services.

For more information, including background, analysis and references, please see the full policy statement.