Residents in Osoyoos and a local family doctor are calling on politicians to hire a healthcare recruiter to address the chronic shortage of general practitioners in the south Okanagan.
One thousand Osoyoos residents signed a petition delivered to town council today demanding stronger recruitment efforts to attract more family doctors to the rural community.
“We are not just complaining. We’ve done our research and we have viable solutions,” said organizer Brenda Dorosz.
The citizen’s initiative called “Residents for Healthcare” requests the hiring of a part-time healthcare recruiter and the establishment of a non-profit society to run a walk-in clinic or a diagnostic centre.
“I need that primary care giver, and I need him close to home,” said resident Marilyn Mulldoon, who has been without a family physician since she moved to Osoyoos from the Lower Mainland one year ago.
Dr. Robert Calder, who has been practicing medicine in Osoyoos for 42 years and founded the Osoyoos Medical Centre, echoed calls for the hiring of a recruiter.
Calder also said more doctors need to be trained in British Columbia after cuts to medical school seats in the 1990’s.
“You make a course correction making fewer doctors and it takes like 10 or 20 years to recover and now we are graduating 288 doctors a year in B.C., it is still not enough,” he said.
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B.C. is three weeks away from a provincial election.
The BC Liberals said they would increase the number of graduating doctors from B.C.’s medical programs from 288 to 400 by 2025.
The party said the province has more doctors than ever before — with 11,841 practicing physicians, which is above the Canadian average for physicians per capita.
The BC New Democratic Party said it would build urgent care centres to improve access to doctors, nurse practitioners and mental health workers to ease the pressure on emergency rooms and fill the gap for the 700,000 people in B.C. without a family doctor.
The BC Green Party promised to allocate $100 million for the expansion of integrated primary care centres to enhance access to general practitioners and reduce waitlists.
As for the situation in Osoyoos, a new doctor will arrive at the Osoyoos Medical Centre in July with the ability to take up to 1,200 new patients, which Dr. Calder said should alleviate some of the pressure.
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