A GP for Me is part of a long-term provincial plan to strengthen primary care. Primary care is the care you receive for your day-to-day health needs, usually from a family doctor, nurse practitioner or through teams of care providers in your community.
A GP for Me is jointly funded by the Government of BC and Doctors of BC, created through the General Practice Services Committee (GPSC). A GP for Me projects are being carried out in local communities by groups of family doctors called Divisions of Family Practice.
Why A GP for Me?
Research shows that a strong primary care system, centered on continuous doctor-patient relationships, leads to better health outcomes for patients. This can also lead to cost benefits for the health care system. For example, research in BC shows that for patients with more complex health care needs, such as diabetes or heart disease, it costs the system less when they go regularly to the same doctor for their care.
How does it work?
A GP for Me is based on successful testing in three communities: White Rock-South Surrey, Cowichan Valley, and Prince George. The physicians in those communities were successful in finding primary care providers for over 13,000 people who did not previously have care. Currently there is no wait for a family doctor in those communities.
The approaches that were tried in these three communities provided helpful input to doctors in other parts of BC. As a result, A GP for Me was expanded to the rest of BC through 2014 and 2015, when another 30 divisions started to work on A GP for Me projects in their communities across the province.
These projects aim to:
- make it easier for doctors to provide and coordinate care for their patients efficiently and effectively – so they will be able to accept more patients into their practices; and
- enable physicians to improve local primary care capacity at the community level.
Divisions of Family Practice are community-based groups of family physicians in communities across the province who work together – and with health authorities and community partners – to achieve common health care goals in their communities.