The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented challenges to BC’s health system, with widespread physician burnout and early retirements. In the Kootenay Boundary region, this led to an increase in residents without a family doctor, which peaked in July 2022.
To address this growing gap, family physicians, nurse practitioners, Interior Health, and Indigenous partners came together through the Kootenay Boundary Primary Care Network (KB PCN) to launch a coordinated strategy. A PCN is a partnership model that coordinates primary care and invests in health care teams in local clinics. They focused on supporting doctors and nurses to prevent burnout, creating team-based clinics with multiple health professionals in one place, recruiting new providers, and connecting new doctors with the community so patients receive care from clinicians who are integrated and familiar with local needs.
Today, 21 co-located and seven regional PCN staff—including nurses, social workers, physiotherapists, dietitians, Aboriginal health coordinators, and occupational therapists—deliver over 27,000 coordinated encounters annually. In addition, the region has added 13 nurse practitioners and six new-to-practice physicians through PCN funding, plus six health authority-funded nurse practitioners and 19 new physicians. These efforts have connected more than 27,600 residents with family practitioners since 2019. As part of the strategy, KB Access—an episodic clinic that opened in January 2025—has already cared for more than 1,000 unattached patients, highlighting the network’s commitment to improving timely access.
Eighty percent of PCN staff are now co-located across 27 community clinics. “Co-location is a game-changer,” says PCN lead Jen Ellis. “Patients can direct-book, providers know their team members’ skills and scopes, and the result is timely, comfortable, coordinated care.”
To achieve their goal of ensuring every Kootenay Boundary resident has a primary care provider within three years, the PCN is also rolling out digital tools and new initiatives to boost efficiency and access. These include AI scribes to provide physicians and nurse practitioners more time for patient care, patient sorting and group programming to reduce the need for physician or nurse practitioner visits, and targeted services for the 16,000 residents who are still without primary care to ensure that they too have access to care. The targeted services include expansion of KB Access, KB Screen (a screening service for unattached patients) and the Castlegar Urgent & Primary Care Centre.
“We must continue investing in team-based care and bringing more co-located staff into clinics, while also finding new ways to make the primary care system work more efficiently,” says PCN Steering Committee Co-Chair, Dr. Shelina Musaji. “For patients, this means faster access and more consistent care. For physicians, it means greater support and more time to focus on what matters most—their patients.”
About the initiatives:
The work was funded by the Ministry of Health and the Family Practice Services Committee.
Partners in this work included participating patients, Kootenay Boundary family doctors and nurse practitioners, the Kootenay Boundary Primary Care Network, the Kootenay Boundary Division of Family Practice, Interior Health, and the Kootenay Boundary Aboriginal Services Collaborative.
To learn more about this work or get involved, contact Kootenay Boundary Primary Care Network (KB PCN) Lead, Jen Ellis, at jellis@kbdivision.ca.