Updates

On 17 April 2024, the Ministry of Health in British Columbia (BC), Canada’s third most populous province, launched enhancements to the Health Connect Registry (HCR) in the Provincial Attachment System (PAS), which was introduced in 2021 to streamline the process of finding a primary care provider (family doctors and nurse practitioners) for the roughly 20% of BC residents without one. This reform aims to create a strong long-term patient-provider relationship by centralizing and expediting the process of matching unattached patients to available primary care providers in the community. A team of 70 attachment coordinators linked with HealthLink BC (an agency created in 2008 by the BC Ministry of Health to provide non-emergency health information) now uses digital tools to match patients to providers. This centralized approach intends to reduce administrative complexities and ensures quicker access to primary care while reducing provider workload; providers are not forced to accept new patients, and should a provider or patient decide the attachment fit is not right, the attachment coordinator will return the patient to the HCR to find a better match.