Background/ Why Is This Important? What Actions Have Already Been Taken?
For the past decade, Child Health BC with support from the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation, has strengthened the growth of pediatric subspecialty outreach clinics across the province and the Yukon, translating to more than 5,000 patient visits annually. In recent years, the growing need to increase access to in-person outreach care has been recognized and the program would be better coordinated through BC Children’s Hospital. In 2024, BCCH dedicated funding and staffing to support the permanent integration of subspecialty outreach care into hospital operations. More information on outreach services from BC Children’s Hospital can be found here.
Where are we going next?
Child Health BC continues to partner with BC Children’s Hospital to evaluate the quality of outreach services provided by utilizing the BC Health Quality dimensions of respect, safety, accessibility, appropriateness, effectiveness, equity and efficiency. The evaluation of outreach services will put forth evidence based recommendations to extend services to underserved communities and equitably distribute clinical programs as needed.
By leveraging the strengths of both BCCH and CHBC, there is an opportunity to develop a centralized, streamlined, coordinated and inclusive subspecialty outreach service model which maximizes the operational expertise of BCCH, complemented with the system planning and evaluation expertise provided by CHBC, to ensure all children, regardless of location, have access to high quality subspecialty care.
Figure 1: Pediatric subspecialty outreach by location and clinic.