The regionalization of health care in British Columbia: Does 'closer to home' really matter?

Driven in large part by the increasing costs of health care delivery, the majority of Canadian provinces initiated a series of commissions or task forces to investigate the status of their health care systems in the last two decades. Emerging from these discussions, regionalization was thought to be the best remedy to address the respective financial and organizational challenges of the various provinces. Yet, despite widespread adoption by almost every jurisdiction, very little is known about the impact of this phenomenon on provincial health systems. This project evaluates whether regionalization in British Columbia's health system was able to overcome a number of challenges with this method of health care reform identified by Church and Barker. Taken from their important appraisal of regionalization across Canada, these authors identified several problems with regional health systems that must be surmounted if provincial health systems are to change the way in which they operate rather than merely be reorganized. Based on this investigation, the project argues that although regionalizaticon has somewhat improved health care operation in British Columbia, the health system still suffered from a number of difficulties during the 1990's that prevent regionalization from being described as an effective reform.