This is one of those little things that’s worth mentioning doing before you leave the United States. In between all the packing and labeling boxes, coordinating the move and all the rest these things might get overlooked.
Before We Moved
Well in advance of actually leaving Arizona, we took care of the following things. These proved to be super helpful to have after the move:
1. Picked up extra of any prescription medications (by ‘extra’ I mean more than 90 days extra if you can. Just let your doctor(s) know about your move and see if there’s anything they can do.
2. Asked our doctors for hard copy printouts of any prescription medications.
3. Picked up extra of any over-the counter supplements we were used to including vitamins, minerals and fitness supplements. Stock up on your favourites!
4. Obtained digital copies of our medical records, including any scans and x-rays. This is of course especially important if you have any chronic medical conditions, surgeries, etc.
5. We did all the same for our pets including getting the required rabies certificate from the dogs vets for the move. We also stocked up on their supplements (good thing as getting Cosequin, an OTC joint supplement sold at Costco has proven difficult to get where we currently live).
After We Moved
If you’ve been reading along, you’ll know that we landed in BC. We’re still here figuring stuff out, but here’s what we did when we got here.
Medical Service Plan (MSP)
One of the very first things we did was to register for BC’s Medical Services Plan (MSP). The waiting period is 90 days, which we knew before we moved. The application form is pretty straight forward, and allows you and your family to apply for MSP, Fair PharmaCare and Supplementary Benefits. You must apply for MSP in order to use health care services in British Columbia. I think most provinces have something similar.
There are options to buy interim health insurance from private insurance providers such as Blue Cross to cover the 90 day MSP waiting period. We checked into it and it was pretty expensive, so we decided to just wait it out and be super careful. That all worked out, nothing bad happened during the waiting period and our BC health insurance kicked in after the 90 days.
Prescriptions
Once we got settled a bit I went about trying to get my prescription filled. I had the printout from my doctor in Phoenix and it’s not for anything crazy, so I figured it would be easy. I was a bit mistaken.
First I took my piece of paper (prescription) to a pharmacist, who told me that he couldn’t fill a prescription that was written in the United States. He explained why, and it made sense. He then sent me to the walk-in clinic, and said that they could rewrite/exchange the US prescription for one issued in Canada.
Since we moved during Covid, the local clinic was still operating by appointment only, so I made one. Once I was there and met with a doctor it was no problem at all to reissue my prescription in Canadian 😃 I took that back to the pharmacist and was good to go.
