Health Care Archives

Gabriola Islanders Make a Healthy Choice!

The community of Gabriola Island was selected for the Rural Coordination Centre of BC’s 2018 BC Rural Community Award at the BC Rural Health Conference in Nanaimo, BC, on May 12, 2018. The community was honoured for its innovation and resiliency in recovering from a healthcare crisis in 2006, when one of the island’s…

Rural Coordination Centre Tackles Rural Health Issues

Health care is a complicated business at the best of times. Effective, appropriate health care delivery in rural and remote places can be particularly challenging. Scattered populations, vast distances, sketchy infrastructure, and often unique socio-economic circumstances all contribute to making adequate health care for rural and First Nations citizens complicated. In rural British Columbia, the…

Gabriola Island DIY Health Centre

Gabriola Island (pop. 4,000) is a remote community just off of Nanaimo, British Columbia. After years of patch-work health care, community members determined the need for reliable medical care that wouldn’t require helicopters or ferries to transport patients off the island to doctors situated in larger metropolitan centres. They banded together to build a state-of-the-art…

Rural Health — Challenges & Innovations Webinar

Rural health challenges in BC — what are they & what can we do to address them? No rural issue is more pressing than the challenge of ensuring every British Columbian — no matter where she or he lives — has access to excellent healthcare. And no one in BC is more focussed on…

Technology and Innovation provide Enhanced Rural Healthcare

Technology will play an increasingly important role in providing rural and First Nations citizens living in remote regions with adequate healthcare.

Healthcare a Hot Topic In This Kootenay Community

Healthcare — access to adequate health services — is an ongoing problem across rural BC. The challenge for one community to recruit new physicians could have a drastic effect on the emergency room hours for residents. The village of New Denver in southeastern B.C., along the shore of Slocan Lake, was going to change its…

Aging BC Doctors an Issue

The phenomenon of aging BC doctors and its implications for patients, especially in rural BC, is looming as a real challenge, . Almost 15 per cent of British Columbians don’t have access to a regular family physician, and a new report published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal suggests the problem will only get worse as…

Is There a Doctor in the House? Attracting Physicians to Rural Towns

Is there a doctor in the house? Rural health care is a pressing challenge for many small, often isolated, communities in rural BC. The challenges facing small communities struggling to provide an acceptable standard of care for their citizens are legion, ranging from long distances to major care centres to dangerous roads. Often the most…

Should Rural British Columbians Accept Sub-Par Emergency Services?

In this CBC News report (including the full podcast interview), BC’s Forest Safety Ombudsman Roger Harris says “many in charge think people in rural areas ‘made a choice’ to get worse care in emergencies.” A report from B.C.’s Forest Safety Ombudsman criticizes an attitude in B.C.’s emergency services that views rural living as “a choice” that comes…

Decent health care, an ongoing rural challenge

It’s difficult to imagine a functioning community without access to a school, basic infrastructure, and a critical mass of businesses and services — chief among them, decent rural health care. For most communities, the standard by which local health care is judged is relatively simple: “do we have reasonable access to 24/7 emergency rural health…