Virtual Health Supports | Webinar

This engaging session will spotlight innovative virtual health solutions transforming rural care in British Columbia Discover how virtual health services, including HealthLinkBC 8-1-1, are transforming rural care by improving access, reducing Emergency Department congestion, and enhancing health outcomes across British Columbia. Guest Speakers: Dr. Kendall Ho is a professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the…

Read More

Innovative Approach to Medical Training

A visionary Canadian physician believes three new medical schools opening in Canada will flip the country’s medical training model on its head to focus more on family medicine. “It takes a community to raise a physician,” said Dr. Roger Strasser, interim dean of the new Simon Fraser University Medical School and founding dean of the Northern Ontario School of…

Read More

Drug Use Study Conducted in qathet Region

A study of people who use drugs conducted in the qathet region found a variety of negative consequences, likening the situation for drug users to living in a goldfish bowl. Dr. Geoff Bardwell, the study’s lead, who is affiliated with BC Centre on Substance Use, and is also an assistant professor in the school of…

Read More

BC Town Fighting to Recruit Family Doctors

Kootenay community of Creston has its own professional headhunter to find physicians Dr. Nerine Kleinhans came to Creston, B.C., from Saskatchewan. She says the town has had a successful recruiting push, but there are still too few family physicians to go around. (Dan Caverly/CBC News) Whoever said an apple a day keeps the doctor away…

Read More

How to Encourage More Family Doctors

A commentary by a family doctor in Saanich: Never, in my 20 years of practice in B.C., have I seen family medicine in crisis as it is now. Trust me, it is not a new issue. Dr. Jennifer Lush I am beginning to think I know how the dinosaurs felt, watching the comet hurtle towards…

Read More

Rural-Urban Inequities in Palliative Care

Many rural communities have few or no palliative care beds. And as financial burdens increase, some health authorities are agreeing to staff new beds only if the local community pays for the design and building costs of new palliative care facilities. When built, residential hospice palliative care programs have often been at least 50% funded…

Read More

BC Rural Health Hub Pilot Is a Go

2020 year in review

If Covid has taught us anything, it’s that we’re all in this together. And that what we know — and think we know — matters. This places a tremendous importance on communications. Not simply top-down, with information flowing from leaders and decision makers to citizens, but the other way ’round as well. This is called civic…

Read More

How can rural community-engaged health services planning affect sustainable health care system changes?

Site Visits Project

How can rural community-engaged health services planning affect sustainable health care system changes?  That’s the question posed in a “pre-print” process description and qualitative analysis of data from the Rural Coordination Centre of British Columbia’s Rural Site Visits Project (SV Project), authored by C. Stuart Johnston, Rural Co-ordination Centre of BC (RCCBC), RCCBC’s Erika Belanger…

Read More