Correspondence: Letter from UBCM regarding Provincial Response to 2022 Resolutions

2022 EB17 Family Physician Crisis

View Royal, Saanich

Whereas British Columbia’s system of family physicians is in crisis and it is estimated that close to one million British Columbians — 20 per cent of the population — is without a family doctor and, therefore, without longitudinal care;

And whereas many senior citizens, people with chronic health concerns, and those requiring prescription refills and regular health check-ups are without a reliable means of care as doctors leave their practices through retirement and for other health care opportunities, walk-in clinics close, and hospital emergency rooms are overwhelmed:

Therefore be it resolved that UBCM call on the Province of BC to address this crisis with the urgency of any state of emergency and work with Doctors of BC and Divisions of Family Practice throughout British Columbia for a solution that will rebuild the family practice system so that citizens of BC can be confident of having a doctor to call their own.

Convention Decision: Endorsed

Provincial Response

Ministry of Health

The Government is focused on increasing access to team-based quality, comprehensive, culturally safe, and person-and-family-centered primary care services for people across BC. The province’s primary care strategy is working to support and build out longitudinal full-service family practice as the foundation of the health care system.

The Government collaborates with family physicians, Divisions of Family Practice and the Doctors of BC through provincial, regional, and local tables, which include General Practice Services Committee (GPSC), Inter-Divisional Committees, Collaborative Services Committees, and more recently, Primary Care Network (PCN) Steering Committees. The long-standing, complex, and critical issues in primary care are well known and inform the discussions and work at these tables.

The Ministry is working with urgency to address these longstanding issues in primary care. You may be aware that earlier in 2022 the Ministry and Doctors of BC provided short term stabilization funding to walk-in clinics in Victoria and South Island PCNs. In August 2022, the Ministry announced an additional $118 million in short term stabilization funding to all family physicians and clinics in the province. More recently, on October 31, 2022, the Ministry and Doctors of BC announced a new tentative Physician Master Agreement (PMA) and payment model for longitudinal family physicians that was co-developed in partnership over a period of several months.

Through the new payment model the Province will be better able to attract new family doctors to longitudinal family practice and to retain existing doctors. It marks a departure from the traditional and outdated fee-for-service model under which doctors are paid based primarily on the number of patients they see in a day. The new model takes into account a number of factors including:

• the time a doctor spends with a patient;
• the number of patients a doctor sees in a day;
• the number of patients a doctor supports through their office;
• the complexity of the issues a patient is facing; and
• administrative costs currently paid directly by family doctors.

The model provides a more equitable payment for the work of family doctors and better recognizes their value in providing full-service primary care to patients. It will help maintain their business autonomy and give them more flexibility to create the kind of practice that works best for them and their patients.

In addition to the above, the tentative PMA includes additional measures to support family physicians, including an effort to identify and address administrative burden and to better support business costs.

The Province will continue to support improvements in access to primary care through its provincial team-based primary care strategy, which will now be enhanced and benefit from the addition of the new payment model, as well as these other benefits in the tentative PMA.