B.C. may have compounded primary care crisis by focusing on reducing emergency care waits

The B.C. government’s desire to avoid the patient’s experience of hallway medicine and crowded hospital waiting rooms may have motivated directing funding towards urgent care centres and hospitals. A Dalhousie associate professor of Family Medicine believes it’s a problem many years in the making. She says such a solution doesn’t fully address long waits and deflected attention away from the need for relationship-based primary care. She also points out that hospital wait times are publicly posted and says it’s easy to tabulate how many injuries or illnesses are being managed, but, she adds, the care that family doctors and NPs provide upstream in the medical system that prevent disease and worsening of symptoms are difficult to quantify. A hospital visit costs much more than a visit to a primary care provider but a B.C. physician points out that physicians trained in family medicine are opting to practice in hospitals or other settings rather than run their own business for considerably less money.