City-funded primary care centre opens in Langford on Vancouver Island

Another B.C. community is taking health care into its own hands by funding family doctors for its residents.

The City of Langford on Vancouver Island has officially opened a new primary care centre, with help from municipal funding.

The city says that when the local primary care society proposed expanding health care, and with no immediate funding available from other levels of government, it committed up to $1.7 million for equipment, marketing and doctor recruitment.

The city says that by the end of the year, the clinic will provide more than 12,000 people with a family doctor.

“Our business model is a supportive not-for-profit model that reduces the administrative burden of our physicians and staff, which allows them to give their undivided attention to patient care,” Alyssa Andres with the South Island Primary Care Society told Global News.

“In the end, residents need physicians, they need health care spaces, and municipalities can’t just put our heads in the sand like an ostrich and pretend it doesn’t exist.”

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The City of Grand Forks in B.C.’s Interior has also announced a one-year pilot program that uses local tax dollars to help recruit and retain doctors.

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Mayor Everett Baker said they used to have nine doctors, but when many retired or left, the city was struggling.

“We said, well, let’s ask the doctors, what is it that you need from us as a municipality to make sure that my citizens have a family physician?” he said.

Baker said that one of the struggles that doctors identified was the hard costs of operating the clinic, which gets harder when there are fewer doctors to split the costs.

The council then voted to provide funds to help doctors operate in the community.

“It’s been well received by our community,” Baker said.

“My promise to my community is that if you live in Grand Forks, you deserve to have a family physician and you will have a family physician.”

Baker added that it shouldn’t be the responsibility of local municipalities to recruit doctors, but they had to do something.