The province says more than 248,000 people have been connected with a family doctor or nurse practitioner through its province-wide Health Connect online registry since it was launched last summer.
The site for patients and a second registry for physicians were launched in July 2023. In April, the province added about 70 “attachment co-ordinators” so those on the wait list can be regularly contacted via text or email to review their status.
Artificial intelligence components now help match doctors with patients based on their geography and health needs — the province says 90,000 more patients have been attached since that change.
The Health Ministry said 588 people on average are now matched via the every day, up from 386 a day at the same time last year — a 52 per cent increase.
UVic nurse educator Paula Leweke, 70, said she waited 30 months on a previous more local version of the registry while in excruciating pain and in need of a hip replacement.
When the Metchosin resident was finally connected with a family doctor, he left the practice only six months later, which put her back on the Health Connect registry.
Leweke finally secured a family doctor this year, not through the registry but through her husband’s physician.
“The NDP paint a much rosier picture than reality,” Leweke said Tuesday.
Health Minister Adrian Dix said the province’s growing population is putting pressure on the health-care system, with 178,000 people added to the province’s Medical Services Plan in 2022-2023 alone.
Dix said about 300,000 to 400,000 people in need of a family physician or nurse practitioner are still on the registry, at the same time as family doctors around the province have identified 313,000 spaces as open, including new doctors who want to build out their practices.
“So those are real opportunities, and those 313,000 spaces are why it’s so important for people to connect to the Health Connect registry in general,” said Dix.
Premier David Eby reiterated that plea Tuesday, saying the province is on track to “connect 250,000 more British Columbians over the next six months to a family doctor or nurse practitioner, which would bring us through a significant part of that list.”
That figure includes the 90,000 already connected since April and another 160,000 anticipated to be matched by March 2025.
“But it’s certain that there are many, many more British Columbians — hundreds of thousands — who are not on the list and we do encourage people to register, because that is the fastest way to get connected to a family doctor,” said Eby at a news conference on Tuesday in Surrey where a new hospital is being built.
The Health Ministry said the province also has 835 new family doctors who are taking on patients since the province offered its new physician pay model in February 2023. That model allows physicians to spend more time with patients rather than being paid a fee for each service delivered.
The new additions bring the total number of family doctors practising what’s called longitudinal care in B.C. to 5,452, the most family doctors per capita of all provinces.
The province said 1,355 internationally educated doctors and 1,319 internationally educated nurses have received full or provisional registration since January 2023. In addition, 14,212 new nurses have been registered since January 2023, bringing the total nurses registered in all categories in B.C. to 72,082.
The growth of nurse practitioners has lagged, however, with 637 hired since 2017, bringing the total to 1,152.
The province said 40 new medical student and 59 residency seats have been added in the last two years, with more to come when the new medical school on the Simon Fraser University campus in Surrey opens in 2026.
Dix said the province needs to continue what it’s doing: “adding doctors, adding nurses, adding health-care professionals, adding internists, adding long-term care.”
With the provincial election set for Oct. 19, Eby warned the province can’t afford to “slash health-care budgets when we need to be hiring even more doctors and nurses.”
Eby says BC Conservative Leader John Rustad, who was in the BC Liberal government that failed to deliver on its promises to match all residents with a family doctor, wants to “cut taxes for oil and gas companies, and to pay for it with a $4 billion cut to our health care system; that’s his health care plan.”
Rustad has denied he will cut billions from health care.
