BURSTDavid Eby’s latest campaign stop in the South Okanagan on Oct. 19 saw him promise a new Urgent and Primary Care Centre (UPCC) for the community, one of the 20 that the BC NDP have announced across the province since Oct. 12.
The same day, the BC Conservatives announced their own promise of 11 UPCCs. Although none were in the Interior, where, alongside Oliver, the BC NDP had also promised an additional UPCC in Penticton.
The Penticton UPCC was one of the first to open in B.C., and was pitched at providing relief to local emergency rooms as well as providing longitudinal primary care, particularly for those struggling with mental health or addiction issues. The facility operates directly under the Interior Health Authority, unlike most other clinics across the province.
Whether any of the newly promised UPCCs will follow the same model is up in the air, as Eby described the party’s use of the term as a “shorthand.”
“Some communities prefer a community health clinic where there’s a doctor and the local municipality wants to champion that; this funding is for that too,” said Eby. “Or for an urgent primary care centre where it’s run through the Health Authority, we’re happy to work with communities about what works best for them.”
The announcement from the BC Conservatives was even less detailed, short of a list of communities and statstics on the number of emergency room closures in B.C., and a promise that the UPCCs would give faster access to care and relieve pressure on emergency departments.
Oliver, the site of Eby’s latest UPCC announcement, has been grappling with emergency room closures due to a lack of staffing, and he was asked by the media how he plans to actually attract the doctors necessary to run all the UPCCs being promised.
Eby pointed to the model itself, whether a Health Authority-run or as a community clinic, as something that would attract doctors. He also cited efforts to recruit additional healthcare professionals from the United States, a new program to bring internationally trained professionals into the medical system and a new medical school as part of the series of steps to address healthcare needs.
“One of the things that we hear from doctors and nurse practitioners as they’re graduating is they don’t want to run their own businesses,” said Eby. “They don’t want to be responsible for administration, they don’t want to be responsible for making the rent on the building, they just want to go and take care of people and then finish their shift and go home, and that’s what the urgent primary care centre model delivers for them. And that’s why we find that particularly new grads, and doctors who are coming to British Columbia from outside British Columbia, are particularly interested in this model…
“It’s no one magic bullet that solves the healthcare challenge. It’s a whole series of steps that helps us move forward on these really difficult issues, especially providing healthcare in rural and smaller centres in the province.”
The BC Conservative announcement claims that the BC NDP’s approach to addressing ongoing healthcare issues has repeatedly failed.
“They announce a new program, raise taxes to pay for the program, hire more administrators to run the program, and bury doctors and nurses in red tape instead of letting them treat patients,” the Conservatives stated.
The BC NDP issued their own rebuttal to the BC Conservative’s, claiming the Conservative’s promise of 11 UPCCs was not part of their already released costed platform, and further cited a current Conservative MLA running for re-election who previously questioned whether UPCCs were delivering value to communities.
A timeline for when the UPCC would arrive in Oliver wasn’t ready, as Eby said it would depend on what model the community wanted to pursue, and whether a new building would need to be constructed to house it as well.