Peticioni i drejtohet: Minister of Health for British Columbia is Josie Osborne

The Saanich Peninsula Outreach Team (SPOT) plays an essential role in ensuring that the most vulnerable individuals in our community have access to vital healthcare services. SPOT provides care for people living with serious mental health or addiction challenges, those who are unhoused or at risk of homelessness, individuals with brain injury, and others with complex medical and social needs. The program serves the entire Saanich Peninsula, including the four First Nations communities.

SPOT now faces imminent closure due to underfunding from the Ministry of Health and the loss of clinical space at the Peninsula Health Unit. If SPOT shuts down, hundreds of patients will lose access to their primary care provider — a change that evidence shows leads to higher mortality, increased suffering, and greater reliance on emergency departments. This will inevitably result in longer hospital stays and more ICU admissions, driving up system-wide healthcare costs.

Scientific evidence underscores the critical importance of maintaining primary care attachment. A 2023 study by Bayoumi et al. found that a lack of attachment to a primary care provider is associated with higher mortality and increased emergency department use in Ontario. Similarly, Marshall et al. (2023) reported that people in Nova Scotia without access to primary care rely significantly more on hospital-based services.

Our Request

We urge the Minister of Health to take immediate action:

1. Provide two physician Alternative Payment Plan (APP) contracts to ensure sustainable and predictable funding for SPOT.
2. Fund a registered nurse and a social worker or equivalent mental health clinician to address the urgent gap in mental health and social support. Currently, clinicians within the Primary Care Network can only see patients with mild to moderate mental health conditions, leaving those with severe and complex conditions without adequate mental health support.
3. Direct Island Health to allocate two dedicated exam rooms for SPOT, along with access to additional rooms when available, ensuring that patient care takes precedence in the use of clinical space and that exam rooms do not sit empty when they could be used to provide care.