What B.C.'s health minister learned from 2022, and what he's taking into 2023

It was a year of unprecedented pressure on B.C.'s health-care system.

Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the deadly toxic drug crisis of 2022, there were reports of people failing to access emergency care as ER closures in rural communities became regular occurrences. 

Towards the end of the year, a "tripledemic" of COVID-19, flu and RSV led to hospitals being swamped with patients.

Despite the challenges, the man responsible for the system — B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix — says he is proud of the work his government did.

Dix spoke to CBC News reporter Zahra Premji about the lessons he learned from 2022 and what he hopes to do in 2023 — including a revamped family doctor payment model.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

If you were to use one word to recap the entire year, what would that one word be?

I guess two words, which is the "continuing impact" of a public health emergency. That dominated a good part of the year: the continuing effect of COVID-19.

I think the second thing that's been defining in 2022 is the challenges that we've come to because we've been in a pandemic and in the public health emergency of the overdose crisis for so long.

My main word to everybody is my sense of gratitude to people who continue to come through in the health-care system and to the public, which continues to really support public health care, not just in their ideas and their politics but also in their actions.

What would you say are your successes but also your failures for this year? Not just you but health care as a whole.

I was hoping to get back in shape [physical fitness], but it didn't happen.

In terms of successes, I would say the historic agreement with doctors — in both building out team-based care and in changing the way that we address primary care. That will be implemented in the coming year.

Do I wish we'd reformed primary care a year ago? Yeah, I do.

You mentioned primary care, and you said, "I wish I could have done it last year." Is there anything else like this that comes to mind?

There is a lot left to do, including presenting our 10-year cancer plan. Age-related cancer … will be a significant factor, and we need to significantly build that out. All of those are significant challenges.

I think we have not been able to sustain the level of immunization that we'd like to see. 

Any time a child is admitted to hospital, that is an unbelievably difficult moment for that child, for their parents and for everyone in the system. We have to continue to find ways to unite around immunization.

We have to do a better job, communicate with one another and support one another. Many of them might be tired of hearing me talk about it, but we've got to find new ways to engage with people.

Is there something that keeps you up at night when it comes to health care?

What the impact would be [from] a pandemic that we had not experienced before on our other public health emergency, the overdose public health emergency, has been profound. [We] didn't see that in advance of it.

It would have been difficult to deal with in advance, of course, but obviously, that continues to be something that we have to address both as a health system and collectively. Too many people are dying.

I think we have a debt in long-term care, and we have to make life better for people … after a couple of years that were really hard.

We [also] need to continue to make progress on surgery because I believe if you're waiting for surgery … it's my general view that it's too long.

COVID is still here. It doesn't look like it's going anywhere. What do we have to prepare for in 2023?

I think we have to learn, ourselves, some lessons coming out of the pandemic, even in health care. 

Stay home when you're sick, wash our hands. All these things are the basic things that really help us prevent respiratory illness. 

That means you'll find me when I go to Save On Foods or Safeway there at Kingsway and Tyne, that I'm wearing my mask and still doing that.

They have to consider that when they have a mild illness … it may just be a mild illness for them. It could be something more significant for their grandparents.

We've got to learn all the good lessons we've had and then also continue to live full lives.