The state of health care on the North Coast and across BC made for commentary on Monday in the BC Legislature, with North Coast MLA Jennifer Rice using her time in statements to put forward a few thoughts on the issue which has become a hot topic of conversation in Prince Rupert of late.
On the theme of health care positions unfilled, Ms. Rice noted of conditions for both the North Coast and the Peace country for some of her narrative.
Indeed, we have a health care worker shortage, not only in British Columbia but also in Canada and worldwide.
In Fort St. John, as well as in my home community of Prince Rupert, we are facing some of the highest number of health care vacancies in the Northern Health Authority region. Since forming government, we have made significant progress in hiring and implementing policies designed to address health care worker shortages.
Unfortunately, the issues with health care go back decades and cannot be solved overnight. Jurisdictions across the world are dealing with an increase in demand for health care workers and a supply that is not increasing quickly enough.
We are working to transform our health care system into a sustainable one that will provide high-quality care for generations to come. While the scale of this change cannot happen overnight, it will have a lasting impact.
A provincial health human resources strategy is under development which will set out actions to grow, recruit and retain the health care workers needed to meet the health care needs of British Columbians in the future. We will have more to announce soon on this strategy, which aims to address capacity issues throughout the health care system and alleviate the burden on our health care workers.
Towards some solutions, Ms. Rice made note of the province's work in creating nursing seats at post secondary institutions, the increase to the primary care centre program, as well as expansion of the LPN program in BC.
She then put a larger focus on events in the North Coast constituency, outlining how she realizes the situation in the region and how she views her advocacy so far on behalf of constituents.
I want to take a moment to address the ongoing health care worker shortages in my constituency. I want people to know that I recognize that the health services are not as robust as they once were and you want to see action to fix that.
I have been advocating on your behalf, and I want you to know that we recently announced supports of $6.3 million for programs and incentives to encourage more health care workers to move to and stay in the northern health region.
This includes supports for clinical management, virtual services, housing, child care, travel and a comprehensive prototype rural retention incentive program.
My home community of Prince Rupert will be benefiting from many of these supports to address some of our recruitment and retention challenges.
We've also announced new resources for B.C. emergency health services.
We're providing additional resources to improve the management of B.C. emergency health services, and we're also hiring more paramedics and dispatchers.
It takes time, but we are working to transform our health care system into a sustainable one that will provide high-quality care for generations to come. I want to take this moment to thank all our health care providers for the outstanding work you've performed in the last two years throughout the pandemic.
The MLA's full commentary can be reviewed from the Legislature Hansard here, starting at the 10:10 AM mark.
She has also posted the statement to the Legislature to her Social media stream, a forum where some in the community are offering up their support or counter points to her themes from Monday.
The topic of health care has been on the mind of some on Prince Rupert and Port Edward councils in recent months.
Among the notes raised, concerns that as retirements or departures come to the North Coast, that the pull of the new hospital in Terrace will see specialists currently based in Prince Rupert gravitate to the new and larger facility, as wall as to call for the entrenchment of current hospital services in the community.
A review of more of the health related concerns from the North Coast can be explored through our Health care archive page here.
For more items of interest on the work of the MLA in Victoria see our Legislature archive page here.
No comments:
Post a Comment