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A Salmon Arm man spent just over a year working on a research project doing a deep dive into primary care in B.C.

Ken Raynor was randomly selected from a national online survey to be one of 31 people in BC who worked together to come up with recommendations for a better health-care system.

“I felt like I’d won the lottery to be a part of something so important,” he said.

Raynor attended Zoom meetings and sat on a panel learning about primary care, how it works and what it is supposed to look like. He learned how primary care works in other countries and in remote areas, and how community health centres function.

Primary care is personalized care given by a doctor who can address a wide range of personal health needs and refer patients to specialists when necessary, but nearly one in four Canadians are without one.

“The group was really diverse and there was almost nothing we disagreed on,” he said. “If we were not personally trying to find a family doctor we all knew people who were. We all had experience with waiting to get tests done or appointments with specialists and we all agreed it shouldn’t be that way.”

Raynor said he’s one of the lucky ones who has a doctor but he knows many people who don’t and who have been on a waiting list for a doctor for many years.

During the project, which is overseen by OurCare, Raynor learned there are more ways of improving primary care beyond recruiting more doctors and nurses.

“Simplifying paperwork so doctors and nurses aren’t wasting hours filling out forms is one,” he said. “Most go into medicine to help people and work with people, they weren’t going to get into business so why are we making them start their own practices?”

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He said one presenter lived in northern B.C. and a nursing station there managed to get internet connection and set up a consulting room to have Zoom calls with doctors at UBC.

“It made a huge difference for new doctors going to service remote settlements, it gave them more experience and confidence,” Raynor said.

A final, condensed report was released on Feb. 26 and includes information gathered from five provincial panels.

“I found it really interesting that after we did our panel in B.C. there were four other provinces with panels and it was amazing how similar the results were even though we hadn’t met with any other groups.”

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Some recommendations in the report include enabling patient access to health records, more virtual access and improving accountability in the health-care system through public education and supporting patient advocacy organizations.

Other recommendations include expanding team-based primary care to improve access, reduce clinician burnout and allow for more holistic approaches. Expanding primary care coverage, focussing on equity, and growing the primary care workforce by accelerating the licensing of foreign-trained doctors were also listed in the report.

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Raynor hopes the collaborative work will bring attention to the issues around primary care and spark improvements for healthcare.

“Hopefully we’re going to get something stirred up and get some ground swell flowing in a better direction,” he said. “For a long time it was hard to keep optimistic and nothing changed but I think there are enough people pushing we might get some positive changes happening." 

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