Sunday, September 5, 2010

Doctors converge in BC

That would be American doctors converging in BC.  The usual way to get help from the US medical system is to travel south.  But this time a motorcycle accident in BC had the injured rider tended to on the scene by two doctors on vacation, both from Seattle.  Coincidentally, they knew each other and one was a former Canadian who was:
... originally from Vancouver, earned his medical degree from the University of B.C., and went to the U.S. in the 1980s when he couldn't get a billing number from the provincial government, which had then put a freeze on hiring more doctors. Our loss was the U.S.'s gain. Parker is now vice-president of U.S. Health-Works, a network of more than 140 medical clinics across the country.
Now in BC there is still a huge shortage of doctors. Here in Surrey there are 10 taking new patients.  Only two are Canadian trained. None are US trained (naturally).  The other eight are from South Africa (2), the UK(2), India(2) and Pakistan(2).

Great system, huh?
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4 comments:

  1. hunterSeptember 5, 2010 at 9:12:00 PM PDT

    We haven't had a family doctor for over 13 years, the two we had retired, and left no replacements. All I can say, is thank goodness we are healthy.

    You can't find a doctor who is taking new patients in Edmonton, no matter where they studied.

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  2. JRSeptember 6, 2010 at 11:12:00 AM PDT

    And I thought BC had to be worse than Alberta. Too bad Ralph Klein didn't make a serious attempt to reform the system before he left the scene.

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  3. JpolsSeptember 10, 2010 at 12:11:00 PM PDT

    I was just talking to a woman who moved to BC from China that is a doctor there, but after spending $200K has given up and will be a nurse here.

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  4. JRSeptember 11, 2010 at 12:29:00 PM PDT

    Yeah, I know, accreditation of professionals from other parts of the world (especially the third world) is a difficult and thorny issue. Seems to me though that if the Chinese doctor is legit she'd have an easier time being accredited than someone from, say Pakistan. That said I think our accreditors should be very careful about who they recognize, esp in the field of medicine. Lots of quacks out there. Our own schools of medicine ought to be cranking up their production rates (and should have long ago).

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