Although funding for A GP for Me has now ended, the Sunshine Coast has benefited from the two-year initiative that saw more than 400 patients connect with family doctors.
The initiative ran from February 2014 to March 2016 and resulted in more doctors on the Coast, a temporary attachment assessment clinic to match patients with family physicians, a new community health website and the creation of a patient navigator – a kind of mobile health care social worker.
The initiative was funded by the Ministry of Health and the Doctors of BC and implemented by the Sunshine Coast Division of Family Practice. It sought to better support vulnerable patients, enable patients who wanted a family doctor to find one, and increase the capacity of the primary health care system.
One issue that needed addressing early on through A GP for Me was the lack of doctors on the Coast.
To fix the problem, five new full-time physicians were recruited as well as one part-time physician who now works in the emergency department at Sechelt (shíshálh) Hospital.
Step two was to get patients without a family doctor matched up with one.
Through the temporary attachment assessment clinic, 355 patients were connected with doctors who were taking patients.
Patient navigator Cayce Laviolette also helped 336 vulnerable patients (through 880 face-to-face visits) connect with health services and 53 of those patients were ultimately matched with a full-time physician.
The patient navigator service was so popular and so widely used that Doctors of BC saw fit to continue funding Laviolette’s position until next year.
Anyone needing Laviolette’s services can contact him at 604-741-3180.
A new health website called FETCH (For Everything That is Community Health) at www.sc.fetchbc.ca will also continue into 2017. The website, launched through A GP for Me, brings together information on all types of health care providers across the Sunshine Coast into an easily searchable database.
The website also has a list of all doctors currently taking patients on the Coast.
“We’ve worked incredibly hard as a community to make this project work locally,” said lead doctor with A GP for Me on the Coast, Jane Bishop.
“We have had a committed advisory committee of local people who helped us be responsive to local needs. I think this is what made our local GP for Me project click.”
