B.C. election comes at pivotal moment for health care: workers
Doctors, nurses, technicians want finances, staffing levels to match campaign promises
All three B.C. political parties are pledging to expand health care, while workers on the front lines say whoever forms the next government must match funding and staffing to what they are proposing.
Polls going into the last week of the campaign show that health care is the second most important issue for voters behind the cost of living and ahead of housing affordability and availability.
Health-care workers say they don't want the next government to lose any momentum over solutions.
"We've … seen really divergent views on what the future of health care in our province should look like," said Devon Mitchell, a Vancouver emergency room physician who also advocates for the public health-care system through Canadian Doctors for Medicare.
"That's also why I think it's also a very consequential election for B.C."
Many British Columbians struggle to find a family doctor or get timely care for a life-threatening illness.
"Really, it's about shortages and the challenges that are existing in hiring, retaining and recruiting the staff that run these operations," said Kane Tse, the president of the Health Sciences Association.
The organization represents 23,000 workers, such as pharmacists and technologists, in many areas of health care, from prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation.
Organizations representing the province's 50,000 nurses or 16,000 physicians, residents, and medical students say much the same — years of underfunding and poor recruitment have led to hundreds of thousands of British Columbians without a family doctor or waiting too long for critical care.
"When family doctors are not properly resourced or supported, it impacts the quality care that the patients receive," said Maryam Zeineddin, the president of B.C. Family Doctors.
"Decisions made in the early 2000s in terms of not investing in nurses, not investing in nursing schools, and not investing in health care has really contributed to why we're in this situation right now," said Adriane Gear, the president of the BCNU.
All political parties looking to form the next government have pages of plans in their platforms to connect residents with doctors or nurse practitioners, hire more health-care workers, and build health-care centres.
And all are promising hundreds of millions more above the nearly $33 billion for health care in the province's current $89 billion budget — a budget with a forecast deficit of $9 billion.
Despite increased spending on health, statistics from the Canadian Institute for Health Information show B.C. has struggled to reduce some wait times despite increasing funding in the sector.
In 2021, nearly 90 per cent of cancer patients had access to radiation therapy within benchmark times frames but that dropped in 2022 and dropped even further in 2023.
Sorting through the dozens of pages committed to health care in the three platforms could be a tough slog for voters, especially with the Conservatives posting their full platform just four days before election day.
The election so far has pitted the NDP, standing by its record over initiatives such as connecting 248,000 people with physicians over the past year, against the Conservatives and Greens, who hope to tap into voter angst.
It's something health-care workers say they understand.
"As voters, and I don't blame patients for this, if I'm in my community and I go to the emergency department because my son fell out of a tree and broke his arm and the emergency department is closed, I'm angry, and I want change," said Mitchell.
The NDP platform vows to continue pushing to train and retain more family doctors and nurse practitioners and connect them with 160,000 people over the next six months.
The Conservatives want to increase care through a new model, one that delivers services through both public and private facilities but is universally funded by the province.
Meanwhile, the Greens are promising a so-called Dogwood Model, which would connect people directly to 93 centres across the province in their communities where they would go for the majority of their health care.
The B.C. NDP says it will have 29 new hospital or expansion projects in the works, while the B.C. Conservatives promise to build a new Children's Hospital in Surrey, expand the Nanaimo Regional General Hospital with a new tower (also an NDP promise) and cath lab, construct a new patient care tower at UHNBC and expand Mission Memorial Hospital with a new maternity ward.
The NDP puts the number of new health-care workers needed at 45,000. They would need to come from other jurisdictions and from an expansion of training centres.
Boosting the NDP is an endorsement from some health-care workers who say the party has made progress over the last couple of years.
An open letter from 24 doctors in Surrey said they "found common ground," made "significant progress," and want to maintain momentum on a new hospital for Surrey, a new regional cancer centre and more long-term beds, among other investments while expressing doubt over Conservative promises.
Nurses want whoever forms government to deliver on a new plan already in the works, a standard for nurse-to-patient ratios, such as one nurse to three patients in emergency rooms.
Gear, the BCNU president, says both the NDP and Greens have signed on for this with the union, while the Conservatives have not responded to the demand, which she describes as one that can, "turn our health-care system around."
"We need to do things that are going to … ensure that patients get the care that they require and that the conditions of work are as such, that nurses actually want to stay in the system, that nurses want to move here to this beautiful province and, and provide health care."
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