Phone consultations part of plan for doctors

A plan to address physician shortage in the province will fundamentally change the way health care is delivered.

A GP for Me and In-Patient Care, two programs announced last month and set to launch April 1, are initiatives of the General Practice Services Committee, a partnership between BC Medical Association (BCMA) and the ministry of health.

The plan calls for “a comprehensive suite of supports and incentives to help improve primary care,” according to Health Minister Dr. Margaret MacDiarmid. “It advances the government’s 2010 promise to ensure all BC citizens who want a family doctor will have access to one by 2015.”

There are an estimated 176,000 people in BC without a family doctor or a strong attachment to one.

“Obviously, this is a complex problem,” said Dr. Chris Morwood, co-chair of Powell River Division of Family Practice. “It’s not one we expect to be solved overnight, but the initiatives announced are a step in the right direction.”

The plan includes money for recruiting new doctors, adding additional incentives for family doctors to take on more frail and vulnerable patients, establishing more clinics and increased use of other health care workers to reduce workload faced by doctors.

One key feature of the plan is doctor consultations over the telephone. General practitioners will be able to bill 500 telephone consultations per year, which will give doctors the ability to increase the number of patients they can take.

A large piece of the $132.4 million in funding comes from the existing physician master agreement negotiated by government and the BCMA in 2012.

A GP for Me is based on a pilot project in three communities, White Rock-South Surrey, Cowichan Valley and Prince George, that matched 9,000 unattached patients with doctors. Doctor recruitment is also a component of the plan which was tailored for each community’s needs.

In addition to A GP for Me, Morwood explained, Powell River Division of Family Practice and Vancouver Coastal Health are working on other projects to address the need of unattached patients, such as proposals for nurse practitioners, a locum recruitment program and increased training opportunities for medical students and residents.

He said that these initiatives will “hopefully start to have an impact on the significant doctor shortage residents are facing in Powell River.”