The College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia is shutting down its online database of doctors accepting new patients.
The database, a directory of available doctors was used to connect patients with a family doctor if they didn't have one. The announcement came March 6, and according to Dr. Trina Larsen Soles the president of the college, the database was simply a listing of doctors who were registered with the college and said closing the database is simply a "red herring."
"It is an indicator of a problem which is that we don't have enough doctors to go around and we have trouble accessing them," Larsen Soles said. "Getting rid of a tool that wasn't working particularly well is neither here nor there, what we need is tools that work well."
Soles says one way is to have doctors working together with patients, as well as nurse practitioners to deal with specific issues like diabetes or heart disease. However, she says there needs to be funding and an infrastructure for such a system.