Health care response makes for fall debut for MLA Jennifer Rice in the BC Legislature

North Coast MLA Jennifer Rice had the point position on
Monday morning to answer some comments on health care
from BC Liberal MLA Tom Shypitka
(Image from BC Legislature video feed)

The province's elected officials are back at their desks in the Legislature and as day one of the Fall Session kicked off on Monday, a topic of some interest on the North Coast made for a good portion of the debate on the day.

With a large collection of health care stories to share culled from he summer, the BC Liberals (name change pending apparently) focused on the state of the province's health care system for their fall season opening commentary.  

With many opposition MLA's taking the government to task over the challenges being faced by residents through the day . 

The issue was a hot one right from the start of the Monday morning return, with Kootenay-East MLA Tom Shypitka raising a number of concerns as part of a Private Members statement in the morning session.

The morning overview from the MLA highlighting themes of paramedic delays, closures of health facilities and a need to address access to other elements of health care. 

He also raised a topic of note for the North Coast that would resonate some, noting of how in some instances Fire Departments have had to step in to fill the gaps in medical care through the paramedic service.

In reply, North Coast MLA Jennifer Rice rose to provide a defence of the NDP government's work on health care and offered up some notes towards what is ahead.

Thank you to the member for raising this important issue that is not just relevant to the challenges we're facing in health care in British Columbia. Canada-wide and internationally, we are experiencing a health care shortage. People are recruiting health care workers from all over, and we're all in competition with each other to attract and to retain these health care workers. 

I, too, come from a rural community and understand the challenges that he's raised with health care for rural communities. 

In 2013, I was appointed by the current Health Minister, the Leader of the Day, to be the northern and rural health critic. The issues that this member raises have been long-standing, since even before my time becoming Health critic. But, of course, that was much more highlighted for me as I carried out my work as the northern and rural health critic. I travelled across the province and visited many rural communities to talk about the challenges, particularly around maternal health, facing rural communities.

So,  I just wanted to acknowledge that the stories that he's shared…. You know, they're deeply troubling stories, and I'm quite empathetic to the pain and the challenges that people face, particularly in those rural communities that he's mentioned. 

But these messages of needing more health support are not going unheeded. 

In fact, just — I don't know — a week ago, a few days ago, our Minister of Health released our health human resources strategy, which is quite a robust strategy to actually address the issues that he's just raised. 

For example, we're going to be expanding the scope of practice for pharmacists and paramedics. Pharmacists will now actually be able to prescribe certain medications, including providing renewals for up to two years. 

Particularly, for those that don't have a family doctor, we know how challenging this can be to get a prescription renewal. Sometimes we have to go to the emergency department, which is not a good use of resources. So by expanding their scope of practice and allowing them to fulfill standard or common prescriptions, this is actually addressing some of the challenges that we're facing. 

Ms. Rice also made note of some of the employment and education measures that the Ministry of Health has embarked on to work towards improved health care outcomes in the province.

We're also recognizing the credentials for foreign-trained workers. There's a lot of red tape for foreign-trained health care workers to practice their particular trade or training, not just in British Columbia but in Canada.

So we've been streamlining that process to make it easier and quicker to get foreign-trained health care workers employed in our community.

We've got new training programs to actually train health care workers on the job. 

We have free education for anyone who wants to be a health care assistant — free education. We're putting in strategies to make health care centers and hospitals much more culturally appropriate and safer. 

We're increasing the doctor training spaces at UBC. For 2023, that'll be 88 new training positions for physicians. We're implementing or we're just undertaking a new strategy to actually create a training program at SFU, or Simon Fraser University. 

We are putting together a pool of nurses that can be deployed to rural and remote communities. We're increasing the access to virtual health care, which is critical for our rural communities, and it has really stepped up the game as far as our ability to get specialized care for those of us that live in these faraway communities. 

We're increasing the support for family doctors. We are assisting doctors right now, for the next few months, on coming, supporting some of their overhead costs for them to actually continue staying in operation for family practice in their clinics. 

We know the overhead costs are really expensive and with the rising cost of living right now, they're facing a huge challenge. 

So these are just some of the things that we're addressing to combat the challenges we're facing for health care, emergency response and, particularly, for servicing rural and remote communities.

The transcript of the Kootenay-East MLA's concerns and the response from Ms. Rice can be reviewed here.

The full presentation to the Chamber can be viewed through the Legislature video archive here, Ms. Rice's talking points start at the 10:55 AM mark of Monday morning's session.

The topic of Health care also dominated the Afternoon Question Period with Liberal leader Kevin Falcon and other MLA's putting a number of concerns and questions to Health Minister Adrian Dix along with repeated calls for the Minister to resign his post.

Some of those themes are new, but a few are perhaps a bit familiar for residents of the Prince Rupert area, gaining a preview of sorts during the course of the MLA's Conversation on Health care of late August.

More notes on the work of Ms. Rice in the legislature can be explored through our archive page here.