BC Budget 2016

The BC Nurses' Union is supportive of new investments to improve patient care and expand access to mental health services in BC's 2016 budget. President Gayle Duteil says nurses welcome a focus on improved care in acute settings as well as on seniors' care in the community.

"Shifting more seniors" care from hospitals to the community level makes sense in an aging society," says Duteil, "but it only works if there's funding to expand community nursing, so patients don't just bounce back into the ER."

BCNU expects that the required resources to enable health authorities to shift care safely into the community as well as the additional nursing care needed for such a transition will be provided.

The government has also announced it intends to modernize community care and assisted living, which fits with the federal government's commitment to invest $3-billion in improving home care across Canada. Age-weighted distribution of the new home care money would help to ensure fairness to provinces dealing with greater numbers of seniors, like BC.

BCNU has welcomed new government initiatives over the past year aimed at reducing violence in the workplace, training more specialty nurses, and hiring enough nurses to ensure safe patient care - and expects that these will continue and improve health care in our province.

In 2015, BC's per capita funding of health care was the third lowest in Canada.

For more information, contact:
David Cubberley
BCNU Communications Officer
Cell: 604-992-9226