BC signs $1.2 billion bilateral agreement with Federal Government

The BC and Federal Governments have signed a deal to improve health care in the province over three years.

The Federal Government is investing close to $200 billion over 10 years to support the Working Together to Improve Health Care for Canadians plan.

This includes $25 billion for tailored bilateral agreements with provinces and territories, a guaranteed five per cent Canada Health Transfer increase over the next five years, and a one time Canada Health Transfer top-up delivered in June 2023.

The two governments announced a bilateral agreement of more than $1.2 billion over the next three years.

This includes $325 million per year in new funding from the Federal Government, and continuing $82 million per year in previously-announced mental health and substance use funding.

Through this funding, the province has a three-year action to deliver improvements to its health care system by 2026, including:

• Developing an innovative model of care at 83 acute care sites throughout BC so nurses can spend more time with patients, as well as introducing additional recruitment and retention initiatives.
• Enhancing access to mental health and addiction services by building on existing efforts in areas of integrated youth services, treatment and recovery, and innovative approaches to respond to the overdose crisis, as well as expanding the number of Foundry centres
• Supporting efforts led by the First Nations Health Authority to increase the number of individuals and communities with access to culturally safer, trauma-informed, and culturally appropriate healing and treatment services.
• Improving outcomes by continuing to address backlogs caused by the pandemic, and expand initiatives like Hospital at Home to help tackle wait times.
• Increasing the percentage of people in the province who have access to their own electronic health information to 75 per cent.
• Increasing the percentage of family health service providers that can securely share patient health information to 50 per cent.

Progress on these initiatives and broader commitments will be measured against targets which British Columbia will publicly report on annually.