Health care is in crisis and we need urgent change. There are simple things we can do to improve access and care. Below are ten things I would like to see implemented. I’m so frustrated with how much patients are suffering. Every single day it gets worse. It doesn’t have to. 
1. Raise the salary paid to nurses by 25% effective immediately. We need to compete with other industries pulling nurses away from health care. Paying private companies to supply nurses is costing so much more. Delayed care from lack of staff is costing so much more.
2. Instruct the College of Nursing to create a simple program that can allow a nurse living in Canada who has trained abroad to be paired up with an existing nurse for 3 to 6 months to allow for rapid credentialing. Pay the supervising nurse a bonus to take this on.
3. Allow Physician Assistants to start work in BC effective immediately if they are licensed in another province. Instruct the College of Physicians to have a simple credentialing process in place for January 1st, 2023 at the absolute latest.
4. Instruct the health authorities to hire a nurse in our busier ERs to be designated the handoff person for our paramedic crews so that they don’t have to sit waiting and can get back out in to the field where they are needed much more quickly. Pay paramedics properly.
5. Raise the general visit fee for family doctors from $31.50 to $50 effective October 1st, 2022.
6. Cover overhead for family doctors up to $10,000 monthly in exchange for a full service practice - after hours care, urgent care for patients when needed, attachment to a family doctor group. This is not for online care or walk in care. Only for full service FP we all expect.
7. Create a fund for family doctors and specialists to access to allow them to hire other health care professionals in to their practices (NPs, PAs, others) to allow for high quality team based care. Have the physician practice hire them to minimize bureaucracy.
8. Raise the salary of long term care workers by 35% effective immediately. We have long term care beds that can’t be staffed. Patients then get stuck in acute care and this backs up our acute services and ER. It’s costing so much more than fixing this immediately.
9. Create a group of 3 experienced physicians and 3 experienced staff from the ministry of health and sit down and figure out how to streamline and eliminate unnecessary paperwork. We can and must do this. So many ideas here that saves docs time and government money. Pick me.
10. Tax cosmetic procedures that are not medically necessary 25% effective January 1st, 2023 and raise that to 50% January 1st, 2024. Reduce demand for cosmetic services that are pulling away the physicians and nurses your taxes have paid to train. Use the funds for above change.
11. Bonus one… I know I said 10. Eliminate the urgent care centers that are not functioning as intended. They are inefficient, ineffective, and pulling staff and docs away from more important services. Save the huge sums of money being spent on this.
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