Victoria: The B.C. government has announced plans to expand its Health Connect Registry. The province said the move will help connect primary-care providers to the people who need them.
The government said starting summer 2023, the registry will continue to support patients to find a primary-care provider closer to where they live.
“The Health Connect Registry is a crucial action, delivering on our government’s commitment to strengthen health care, and it will help us provide better, easier access to primary care for generations to come,” said Adrian Dix, Minister of Health.
“Between the new doctors who signed up with our new-to-practice incentive program, doctors who are joining the new payment model, as well as new nurse practitioners and the many more to come, we are ensuring people throughout the province can connect with those primary-care providers and others as medical professionals enter family practice and build their patient panel,” he added.
On July 1, the Health Connect Registry was expanded from select communities to all communities throughout B.C.
People will be connected to a primary-care provider based on their health needs, the provider’s ability to take on those needs, and the region.
“The Health Connect Registry is the patient-facing side of the province’s action plan to strengthen primary care and better connect people to primary-care providers, including a new family doctor compensation model to attract and retain family doctors that has nearly 3,300 signups; a new-to-practice incentive program that has 156 new family doctors registered; and a new provincial rostering registry for individual family doctors and nurse practitioners to manage their patient panel information and identify when they can accept new patients.