Webinar Wednesday – Addressing Physician Shortages in Mid-Sized Rural and Remote Hospitals: The Virtual MRP Model

Physician shortages pose a critical challenge in rural and remote hospitals across B.C., leading to diversions, closures, and operational challenges. Our presentation will provide an overview of an innovative and collaborative approach to addressing physician shortages in BC: Virtual MRP for Mid-Sized Hospitals. The Virtual MRP (Most Responsible Provider) for Mid-Sized Hospitals model integrates virtual physicians into in-person care teams utilizing remote technology to enable patient care including assessment, diagnosis, referrals, and treatment.

In partnership, Interior Health, Northern Health, Emergency Care BC, the Ministry of Health, and the Provincial Health Services Authority’s Provincial Virtual Health team have developed this model which aims to incorporate additional physician support into hospitals to stabilize hospital operations, address physician shortages, and reduce strain and burnout on in-person staff. This model will reduce service disruptions and enhance access to consistent, timely care. The model is being piloted at Cariboo Memorial Hospital (CMH) in Williams Lake, B.C., and scheduled to be piloted in Prince Rupert in early 2025; these pilots will inform scale and enable expansion to other sites across B.C.

Our presentation will highlight key activities taken as part of the development of this model, including:

• Learning from experts in other jurisdictional across Canada where similar models have been implemented with success.
• Actively collaborating with key partners including hospital physicians, nurses, allied health, clinical operations, IMIT teams, indigenous partners, patient partners, and hospital leadership.
• Strong application of the ADKAR model for change management and an innovation framework for all engagement, sessions, planning, and implementation.
• Identifying clinical, technical, and operational requirements.
• Contracting and collaborating with a third-party vendor.
• Developing a readiness checklist and implementation playbook for new pilot sites.
• Leveraging learnings from the pilot sites to inform provincial scale and spread of the model.

We will provide an overview of the key features and requirements of the Virtual MRP for Mid-Sized Hospital model including options for: virtual provider staffing, technology to facilitate virtual care, a technology implementation and support process, new clinical operational workflows, a process for coordinating patient visits and for sharing clinical information including medical record, and on-site staff to support the hands-on clinical interventions required at the site. We will discuss preliminary evaluation metrics from Cariboo Memorial Hospital and how lessons learned have been leveraged to other pilot sites and to help inform the provincial model of care. These learnings will be leveraged for continuous quality improvement. Findings will offer valuable and actionable insights to refine the model to ensure sustainability for long-term resilience against provider shortages and guide scaling and expansion of the model hospitals across B.C.

Speakers