British Columbia will gain a married pair of family physicians trained in the United Kingdom in early 2025, but they might not be staying for long depending on various factors, including the outcome of the provincial election.
Dr. Habib Rehman and his wife Dr. Sheena Raazi Sameer said they chose to move from Birmingham to British Columbia after reading an article in late 2022 about the then-pending introduction of B.C.'s new longitudinal family physician model. Introduced in early 2023, it gives physicians the option to be paid based on the number and complexity of cases.
Adrian Dix, B.C. NDP candidate for Vancouver-Renfrew, who served as health minister before the dropping of the writ, said earlier this year that the new payment model has attracted more than 700 new family doctors.
"What we liked about the article was, that it showed us, that there is a government that is listening to their doctors and working with them to introduce a model that would improve remuneration, but also tackle some of the problems, which is to provide more time to spend on complex cases and take some administrative burden off," Rehman said.
"Things in the UK haven't been great for a while now," he said.
Reporting from the United Kingdom shows its National Health Service, in a declining state with reports of long waits for emergency room care, staff shortages and burn-out among health care workers. The state of the NHS played a decisive role in the UK's national election that swept Labour back into power after 14 years of Conservative governments.
Rehman said Labour's victory is not enough to turn things around given the "significant" damage that those 14 years had done, especially when it comes to primary care.
Concerns about emergency room closures, staff shortages and burnout are also not unfamiliar for British Columbians. When asked how concerned he was about walking into conditions that he was trying to escape, Rehman said these issues are occurring across the western world.
"So what we were looking for is a place where there is a government that is understanding the problem and is taking actions to rectify it," he said. "(My) feeling is that with the sort of plan that's being put in place by the NDP, really focusing on having strong primary care, which is the foundation of any health care system, that over time, things would improve and I'm most optimistic about the conditions in (B.C.) than in most other places."
Rehman is now set to start at a Vancouver clinic in March 2025 with the couple's arrival scheduled for January after they had received their permanent resident status in July 2024.
The couple — who have never been to British Columbia or Canada, but have Canadian friends — will come regardless of what happens in October because they have already made arrangements. But Rehman said the NDP played a big part in their choice.
"So when I realized recently, that there is a possibility the NDP might not win the election, that really did concern me, because we had a Conservative government in the UK.
"We don't really want to be in a similar position again when we are making an effort to move across the world to be somewhere. (We) would need to really have a re-think and look at their policies quite closely."
The Conservative health care platform calls for a revamping of the provincial health care system into a (continental) European-system that would remain universally accessible, with services themselves delivered by government and non-governmental agencies.
Leader John Rustad also said during Tuesday's debate that his party would invest an additional 3.8 billion over three years among other measures to improve the health care system.
Black Press Media reached out to the Conservative Party of B.C. for further comment and will update this story with its response.
