Dear colleagues,

Listening to patients and emergency providers across BC has highlighted ongoing challenges at discharge, including inconsistent communication, missed opportunities for patient questions, and variable understanding of next steps.

ECBC’s role in supporting quality discharge care

ECBC is refining its approach to patient discharge to better support high-quality, patient-specific discharge practices in the ED. This work recognizes discharge as a shared process that depends on providers giving clear, relevant information and supporting patients to ask questions, understand next steps, and feel prepared before leaving the ED.

What’s changing

As part of this shift, ECBC is retiring many patient information and discharge sheets previously hosted on emergencycarebc.ca. While these materials have been developed with strong partner involvement over time, maintaining them has become increasingly complex. Ensuring consistent governance, regular updates and alignment with evolving standards has proven challenging, particularly given the breadth of content and varying scopes. Healthcare providers have also shared that relying on generic handouts alone does not consistently support meaningful discharge conversations or meet patient needs.

ECBC will continue to support some emergency-specific patient information sheets; however, for most patient‑facing health information, patients and providers should rely on trusted sources such as HealthLink BC, which maintains up‑to‑date patient education materials.

This approach allows ECBC to focus on what it can reliably steward – emergency care standards and discharge practices – while ensuring patients continue to access current, high‑quality health information from appropriate sources.

What’s coming next

A refreshed ECBC discharge strategy and toolkit is in development and will be shared in the coming months. The strategy will include practical tools to support safer, patient‑specific discharge conversations, including development of the “Know Before You Go – 4Q’s” framework. ECBC will reach out to emergency care providers when more information and a draft is ready to share and invite feedback at that time.

Your input is needed

We are seeking your input to help determine which resources should be retained. Specifically, we’d like to identify which ECBC Provincial Emergency Patient Information Resources (PEPIR):

• are regularly used in practice
• do not have an equivalent resource elsewhere (e.g., HealthLink BC)
• would warrant ongoing maintenance and updating

Please email your feedback to ecbc@phsa.ca by June 30, 2026.

Thank you for your continued work supporting patients during one of the most important transitions in their emergency care experience.

Emergency Care BC (ECBC) provides services to a diverse population including First Nations, Métis Peoples and Inuit living in various settings and communities across British Columbia. As a provincial network, we operate on the unceded traditional and ancestral lands of First Nations.