From Dire Straights to Roaring Success, Urban Centres Look to Rural Community to Improve Patient Attachment Strategies

I’ll speak that from the Health Authority and from the division…We had to go after it. If, had we decided that we were going to stay out in the countryside and not get invested, we would have lost out on tons of resources and so we’ve just…strategically, strategically gone and waved the rural flag and banner from Hope in the Health Authority in the division of, when divisions were created, Hope was lumped in with Chilliwack. And so in 2013 we sort of, because divisions were 2009, 2013 we were in a crisis and we just said, we need some help, right? And the realization, ‘well I guess we can give you some funds that we’ve been taking on your behalf for 5 years’. ‘Oh, that would be really helpful’, so with the GP for Me funds, which is about $30,000, we were literally able to change the momentum of care because we could then take a little bit of infrastructure funds and put a little bit of money towards recruitment and retention and suddenly the momentum changed from we were down struggling with 4 physicians, you know, or 5 physicians to a complete change in momentum and because we’ve done so well, I believe, in the last few years, the division now looks to us to figure how to do things well and so we are leading the urban, like Chilliwack is a place with 25,000 people who are unattached, the emergency room is overrun, the family doctors aren’t taking patients. Our patient attachment mechanism in Chilliwack is at a standstill and, yet, in Hope and Agassiz because of the work that we’ve done, we’re actively taking on patients, we’re covering full service, we’re seeing you in the hospital in the community, in the walk-in, house calls, the whole bit.