If the BC NDP wasn’t the most secretive government in Canada already, it has taken another step into more secrecy.
They have now ramped up the data hiding when it comes to the number of doctors working on any given day.
The pandemic exposed what many Canadians already knew, Canada’s healthcare system is fragile and has been for a long time.
The BC NDP has been hiding data since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and it just keeps getting worse. First they were hiding the real statistics and combining incidental hospitalizations and deaths (unrelated to covid but happened to test positive) with real hospitalizations and deaths caused from Covid-19.
Then they removed the statistics by age and vaccination status from the Covid-19 dashboards when the stats no longer worked to push their narrative.
Reporting for staffing levels at urgent primary care centers are now all clumped up into one group so it’s impossible to know how many doctors were working compared to how many were supposed to be.
According to Post Media they received a report that covers the period between June 24 to July 21, 2022. The report “combines all full-time staff — which includes family physicians, nurse practitioners, licensed practical nurses, allied health workers, clinical pharmacists and Indigenous resources — into one single category.”
Coming out of the pandemic British Columbia has been having ER closures across the province and has been blamed on doctor shortages. Up until recent it was reported the closure of the ER in Port Hardy was because of a shortage of doctor’s. However this time it was a shortage of nurses.
The BC NDP claim to be transparent and accountable but keep removing checks and balances to make it harder for the public to hold them accountable.
This comes at a time Minister Adrian Dix says they have been hiring healthcare workers like crazy. While Dix says they have hired a lot it doesn’t seem like it because more closures keep happening.
Shirley Bond, a B.C. Liberal health critic, criticized the government for lowering transparency at a time when residents of the province who don’t have a family doctor want to know where to go for emergency medical needs.
“To find out that now there is once again a lack of willingness to provide specific details about individual UPCCs is just par for the course for this government,” she said. “British Columbians deserve to know the situation in UPCCs across the province.”
The BC Liberals have called for a review of primary care centres to determine whether the health-authority-run system of team-based care is functioning properly.
