Health Minister Josie Osborne announced a new marketing campaign to entice medical staff to B.C., including reducing the credential process to six weeks.
The provincial government is launching a marketing campaign to entice U.S. doctors and nurses to move to B.C. and working to reduce the credentialing process to six weeks for those wanting to move north of the border.
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Health Minister Josie Osborne said Tuesday there are two reasons behind the move — to help address the acute shortage of health-care workers in the province, and to strike back against tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump.
“I think this is a very challenging time for some health-care workers to be in the United States with what they are facing,” Osborne told reporters at the legislature.
“Whether it’s because their federal government is withdrawing from the World Health Organization, cutting public services or attacking reproductive rights, health professionals in the U.S. have a good reason to be alarmed.”
The health ministry said it is working with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of B.C. to ensure all physicians registered with the American Board of Medical Specialties will be able to obtain licences to work in B.C. without having to go through any additional training or tests.
The B.C. College of Nurses and Midwives is also collaborating with the province to allow nurses registered in the U.S. to apply directly to the college, which will then review their qualifications and speed up timelines.
Currently, the process for gaining credentials takes five to eight months, including pre-screening, and the ministry is confident it can get that down to six weeks over the coming months.
Osborne said she didn’t know how many doctors will take up the call, but pointed to a campaign last year to encourage doctors from the U.K. and Ireland to move to B.C. as a success. There has so far been no data released showing how many physicians that campaign brought to the province.
The minister also touted her government’s efforts to get British Columbians a family physician, saying 250,000 people were provided a doctor or nurse practitioner last year and that the province has added over 1,000 family doctors since introducing a new pay model in 2023.
The B.C. College of Family Physicians has warned, however, that much of this progress could be wiped out in the coming years as 40 per cent of current family doctors are planning to retire or reduce their work hours over the next half decade.
Dr. Kevin Mcleod, a North Vancouver-based internal medicine specialist, says the marketing campaign could prove to be both good politics and good policy as he has talked to a number of colleagues in the U.S., Australia and other places who want to move back to Canada.
He said it would be great if B.C. could reduce the credentialing process to six weeks for doctors from countries where the medical systems are similar. He said the province also needs to do more to expand training spaces.
“We have all these Canadians who are doing their medical school in places like Australia and Ireland and the U.K. and other places, because we don’t have enough training spots here — Canadian kids who want to come back to Canada,” said Mcleod.
“There’s no reason for that. We could increase residency spots. They’re fighting for a few handful of spots, so many hundreds and hundreds of Canadians are training in other countries.”
The specialist added that he doesn’t believe the higher wages offered to doctors and nurses in the U.S. will be too much of an impediment as American medical professionals are required to pay for malpractice insurance and are vulnerable to litigious patients in a way Canadian health-care workers are not.
Former B.C. health minister Terry Lake agreed with Mcleod and said anything the province can do to bring in more doctors and nurses should be seen as positive.
“If we can be a refuge for Americans looking for some sanity, and help our health care at the same time, all the better,” he said.
“Doctors likely get paid more in the U.S., but then they’ve got malpractice insurance and other obstacles that doctors here don’t have. I would say in British Columbia, if you’re a family doctor, you’re getting paid better than most family doctors anywhere in the world.”
Lake said the province shouldn’t just be looking to the U.S. or other countries for health-care workers, but should also lump physician and nurse credentials into its efforts to bring down interprovincial trade barriers.
The B.C. Conservatives were less complimentary of the province’s changes, arguing the marketing campaign and credential recognition announcement is nothing more than a “desperate attempt to cover up years of failure and mismanagement.”
Rural Health critic Brennan Day said over 700,000 British Columbians are still without a family doctor, and more than 1.2 million are on wait lists for specialists.
“This policy shift is long overdue, and I sincerely hope it delivers real results for British Columbians. We need to see trained doctors and nurses getting licensed and working in our communities within weeks, not years. The NDP is good at making flashy announcements, but what matters now is follow-through,” said Day in a statement.