Answering The Call For Sustainable Health Care in B.C.

Vancouver health care engagement | BCBusiness
A recent B.C. initiative took up the mantle that the best way to improve health care is through transparency and engagement with B.C. residents.

A new B.C. initiative engages consumers to build a more innovative health care system.

Health care across North America is in crisis. An aging boomer generation, increasingly unhealthy youth and tapped-out taxpayers are pushing the system to the brink. The only solution is a radical change in the way we interact with health care and a fundamental rethink of the system itself.


To effect that change, B.C. launched a massive health care innovation program. Big improvements to enhance patient and provider experiences were (and continue to be) implemented in preventative care, hospitals, community care and support systems.

To make the innovations work, though, ordinary citizens needed to understand what was happening and what role they personally played in this massive shift.
This required a fairly unique piece of communication. British Columbians needed to understand the magnitude of the job so they wouldn’t expect the system to fix itself overnight. At the same time, they needed to understand the biggest piece of the innovation puzzle was them: a culture of prevention, better diet and less stress is a better cure than medicine.

Make it Entertaining

To address these issues, the government needed to create an information campaign that wouldn’t bore people to death.

The team from the Ministry of Health and its communications agency brainstormed ideas and the tactic they kept coming back to was the Royal Society of Animators films used to animate TED talks. Nine films were crafted on subjects as diverse as the Story Of Health Care to Innovation In The Emergency Room.

These films were then incorporated into thinkhealthbc.ca, a site that featured everything from stakeholder videos to chat rooms where B.C. residents could voice their questions, concerns and ideas.

Real-Time Answers

The site also included a feature virtually unheard of on government sites: a real-time online answer line. Not only is this a major leap toward connecting government with B.C. residents, but it’s also a rich source of learning and ideas for future innovation.

 The program has just launched, and judging by chat room activity, is getting good traction with citizens.

As Graham Whitmarsh, Deputy Minister of Health says, “This is possibly the most ambitious proactive program we’ve created this year. And, I’m happy to say, it’s one of the most creative pieces of work I’ve ever seen come out of government.”