B.C.’s Health Minister is looking to overhaul the regulatory system for colleges that oversees health professionals in the province.
Among the proposed changes proposed by an all-party committee, Adrian Dix says the province is looking to consolidate the number of colleges for healthcare professionals from 20 to 5.
“They’ll make colleges more effective and efficient, they’ll bring them into the 21st century. We have very significant regulatory obligations on colleges, and it’s asking a lot, for example, of colleges that have a very small number of members to essentially impose fees on their members and try and fund such a process adequately.”
One of the major changes, outlined in the proposed changes, would include “increasing transparency by requiring that actions resulting from accepted complaints be made public.” The proposals come as a result of the Cayton report released in April, which says the College of Dental Surgeons had an underlying resistance to prioritize safety of its patients.
“For the most part they’re well handled now, but this will ensure that all professions will have the means within them – within complaints around their profession – of conducting proper investigations. Proper processes. And that is in the interest fundamentally of the public, but also of the professions,” Dix says.
There are more than 120,000 healthcare professionals in B.C. who are members of the 20 regulatory colleges.
Dix announced the proposed changes alongside Liberal health critic Norm Letnick and Green health critic Sonia Furstenau, who were part of the committee that came up with the proposed changes.
“We’ve met several times since the minister has invited us, Sonia and myself, to join us on this quest. He has been an excellent chair in the sense of making sure we have open discussion. All the ideas were considered. And I for one… felt at all times that our ideas were welcome, and that those ideas would be incorporated in the document should they prove supported by the three of us. So it really was consensus-based,” Letnick says, comments that were echoed by Furstenau.
The Health Ministry is accepting public feedback online on the proposed changes, which can be found here and will be available until Jan. 10. Dix says the proposed changes would ideally be brought to the BC Legislature for approval next fall.
