Outcry is growing over the B.C. government’s chronically understaffed urgent and primary care clinics, which critics say are plagued by an inefficient and costly bureaucracy and a system that does nothing to attract family doctors.
This week, the B.C. Liberals called for an audit to address the “worsening dysfunction” of the urgent primary care clinics, while the B.C. Greens recommended keeping the clinic infrastructure but giving control back to the doctors.
A Chilliwack doctor on Wednesday joined the chorus of criticism, calling for the government to provide funding directly to doctors to establish team-based primary care clinics rather than the current system of health authority-run clinics, which he says are costing taxpayers a fortune.
Since the B.C. NDP began rolling them out in 2018, urgent and primary care centres have been touted as a way to ease the strain on hospital emergency rooms by providing people same-day urgent, but non-emergency, health care.
