2019-2020 was an exciting year for the RCCbc. Much of our ongoing work continued to flourish (highest attendance of the BC Rural Health Conference yet, reaching 101 Rural Site Visits , new projects began (partnership with Canada’s Digital Technology Supercluster to support rural IN PoCUS, supporting rural maternity with ROAM-SP), and much of the groundwork and relationship building we have incorporated into the fundamental way ‘we do business’ over the last many years has provided the foundation to take our work to next level and be able to pivot when we needed to at the end of Winter 2020.
The commitment of RCCbc, our partners and other stakeholders to collaboration resulted in part from the January 2019 gathering at the Provincial Health Care Partnerships Retreat. We developed and formalized new partnerships, including the BC Academic Health Sciences Network, and the Memorandum of Understanding signed with First Nations Health Authority . An additional, albeit unexpected driver of select RCCbc work in early 2020 resulted from the Covid-19 pandemic, which rapidly mobilized the launch of tools and rural health supports ahead of schedule in project such as Real Time Virtual Support (RTVS), rural transport collaborations, and IN PoCUS.
Finally, we would like to acknowledge and thank Dr. Dave Snadden who is wrapping up his term as the inaugural Rural Doctors’ UBC Chair in Rural Health. He has brought experience, insight, and great leadership to the role and has been an excellent mentor to several developing Rural Scholars across the province.
All of these successes may have occurred during 2019-20 but are the result of years of work in developing relationships, trust, and collaboration frameworks that allow a wide variety of stakeholders to contribute towards the improvement of rural healthcare for providers, citizens, and rural communities. This Pentagram Partnership Plus collaborative framework is foundational to the work of RCCbc – it has allowed us to build stronger relationships, which in turn enabled all of us to come together and work as a whole to strengthen and support rural healthcare throughout the province during a crisis. RCCbc – with its relationship to the Joint Standing Committee on Rural Issues, and its collaborative, health equity approach to healthcare systems improvement – has served as an example of how alternative approaches to healthcare advocacy, education, and support can create sustainable change, and will likely continue to lead as the pandemic continues on through the coming months of 2020.
Areas covered in the report