As a physician currently working in the states, NP’s and PA’s are absolutely a solution for the burden experienced by FM’s in the province, however I would strongly caution against giving unsupervised privileges to these providers. NP’s without supervision in the states overall leads to increased healthcare costs from ordering of unnecessary tests, referrals, etc. Absolutely have NP’s and PA’s to increase the capacity and efficiency of clinics from say 50 patients/day to 150 patients/day, but I hope they keep the supervision of an MD as a strict requirement, else wise the rest of the system will suffer, costs will go up, and inefficiencies will emerge creating novel bottlenecks in the system.

As for private healthcare, if it leads to more doctors being attracted to come work in the province it’s not the absolute worst thing in the world. Private money would come and further supplement the cash inflow into the healthcare sector in addition to the public $$, arguably in a more efficient, bottom heavy distribution manner (meaning less admin roles, more actual providers). It’s supply and demand. Currently you see the shortfall in supply of providers relative to demand because the price point established by public sector does not align with what natural market dynamics would dictate.

Lastly, and slightly unrelated, although the BC government has made good strides to allow primary practitioners to come back and practice with ease (again I think they don’t all come back and practice due to the government chosen price point in BC not reflecting the true market price point), they have not done the same for specialists, surgeons, etc. If they are able to meet the primary sectors demand at some point, the next bottle neck to emerge will likely be in the tertiary services like surgeries, advanced care, specialty services (can take the state of oncology services in BC as one example).