Whereas all British Columbians, notably families, seniors, children and people with chronic and acute health care needs are facing an immediate health care crisis due to the closure of hospitals and emergency rooms in their communities; And whereas there is a critical need for additional family physicians, emergency room doctors, specialists, paramedics, and nurses across the province: Therefore be it resolved that UBCM ask the provincial government take urgent steps to ensure hospitals, emergency rooms, and ambulance services are open and available 24 hours a day; And be it further resolved that the provincial government increase funding and training opportunities for health care professionals so that all residents of British Columbia can access an appropriate and necessary level of care.
Ministry of Health Government is committed to ensuring British Columbians receive safe hospital care. The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented challenges for hospital systems around the world; however, Government and health authorities have been working hard to adapt to changing demands and health human resource challenges, while striving to deliver quality and timely care. At times, due to staffing, a hospital may resort to a temporary diversion when there is a gap in service that can be addressed using BCs extensive network of hospitals and health care services. Work is currently underway to help decrease the pressures on emergency departments and hospitals. An Emergency Department and Hospital Capacity Task Group was created on September 22, 2022, to support the development of a provincially coordinated approach to address capacity challenges facing emergency departments and hospitals in preparation for increased demand due to COVID-19 and respiratory illness in Fall 2022Winter 2023 and beyond. Health authorities are continuously working to recruit across all their vacancies, particularly in rural and remote communities, where a very small number of vacancies can significantly disrupt the delivery of services. There are a number of targeted strategies that health authorities use to recruit and retain staff in rural and remote communities, including a variety of incentives and programs such as relocation assistance, rural retention grant and BC loan forgiveness. Since 2021, BC Emergency Health Services BCEHS, in partnership with the government of BC, has made significant changes and investments to improve and stabilize staffing throughout the province, including in rural and remote communities. To bolster ambulance services in the province, in 2021, BCEHS added 22 ambulances, 9 of which are already in service. BCEHS also converted 24 ambulance stations from on-call paramedic staffing to 247 stations in 2021, followed by 3 more stations in 2022. Also in 2021, BCEHS added more than 500 new full-time and part-time permanent paramedic positions in rural and remote areas, in addition to 125 new full-time paramedic positions in urban areas. To further stabilize paramedic staffing in rural and remote communities, on September 13, 2022, BCEHS posted 254 new permanent positions around the province, to transition additional temporary positions introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic, to permanent positions. Since June 2022, BCEHS has taken steps through temporary pay incentives to bridge staffing challenges, bolster paramedic coverage, and improve service levels throughout. The current temporary pay incentive that was put in place on October 22, 2022, will remain in place until BCEHS and CUPE 873 have a new collective agreement in place. Negotiations for a new collective agreement began on October 3, 2022, with no specific conclusion date set. The Ministry of Health the Ministry has mandate commitments to expand healthcare training, improve credential recognition, and implement a comprehensive health human resources HHR strategy, which was recently publicly announced on September 29, 2022. That Strategy outlines 70 actions under 4 cornerstones to, over the next 5 years, support the recruitment, retention and redesign of the health system, including expanding training in priority areas. In addition, while the Ministry was developing that strategy, the government has also been focused on taking immediate actions to support the system and health care workers. To support these ends, government has invested 96 million over 3 years through Budget 2021 to expand health education seats and residency positions across BC increasing total seats from 8,000 to over 11,400 publicly funded seats. These investments have led to the addition of 602 new nursing seats, 270 new allied health and medical seats in post-secondary institutions across BC. Since 2017, the government has increased the number of annual post-graduate residency positions including family medicine and other high-priority specialty training areas. To address urgent primary health care needs, the Ministry is working in close partnership with the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Training AEST and the University of British Columbia UBC to add 40 new seats across UBCs distributed undergraduate medical education UGME program starting in 202324 for a total intake of 328 students annually by 202425, 14 increase from the current 288 students. In addition to the UGME expansion, the province is working to address the critical need for family physicians, by adding 40 additional entry-level family medicine residency seats beginning in the 202324 fiscal year and expanding from 174 up to 214 by 202425. An additional increase in both family medicine and specialty residency seats, which mirrors with the UGME expansion, will also add a further 48 post-graduate medical education positions funded at 163 million in 202122 up from approximately 135 million in 201718. Funding has supported 58 post-grad medical education spaces per year for the International Medical Graduate BC Program for residents who received their medical training outside of Canada. In April 2022, the Ministry also announced 12 million to support bringing internationally educated nurses IENs into the BC system. This includes new supports and bursaries to make it easier for eligible IENs to enter the provinces health system and creating new nurse navigator positions to help IENs navigate the assessment and licensing process. Triple Track, a revised assessment option for IENs, will streamline the assessment pathway so IENs can be assessed for multiple professions HCA, LPN, RN simultaneously, reducing red tape, cost and time. The Province is also creating more opportunities to support people entering the health care system workforce, through the development of innovative training programs such as the Health Career Access Program HCAP. HCAP is an innovative strategy to integrate staff without prior healthcare education into the workplace while providing funding and support to complete the Health Care Assistant education and training program. Since 2020, almost 64 million that includes 30.2 million in budget 2021 was allocated to train 2,400 health care assistants HCAs as part of HCAP. The Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Training was also allocated funding for 600 training seats in 202021. A drastic overhaul to our primary care system resulted in the introduction of Primary Care Networks and Urgent and Primary Care Centres. Through the Primary Care Strategy, as of Period 12 of 202122, 961 FTEs have been hired by 235 clinics and regional hubs across 74 initiatives. Given the complexity of current health care issues, the impact of initiatives advanced to date will not be immediately felt across the system. Moreover, continued investment into recruitment, retention, training of health care professionals, and ongoing redesign of BCs health system are essential.