Doctor shortage hits Kelowna walk-in clinics hard

Walk-In clinics in and around Kelowna are experiencing increasing patient loads as the city continues to cope with a doctor shortage.

“We’ve seen an increase in wait times at all the walk-in clinics,” Medi-Kel Family Practice Clinic owner Mike McLoughlin said. “For us, we have 15 to 20 people at the opening of the clinic every morning. We have never seen that before.”

McLoughlin is also the founding director of the B.C Association of Walk-In Clinics. He says local walk in-facilities are feeling extra pressure because of two walk-in clinic closures in Kelowna in the past six months.

“(The) Rutland walk-in clinic closed last August and then just more recently the Glenvalley clinic has closed,” McLoughlin said.

He said those clinic closures are just part of the problem. McLoughlin says the other reason for walk-in clinics experiencing the increase in patients has to do with Kelowna General Hospital.

“They have been recruiting family doctors from community to work solely at the hospital,” McLoughlin said. “I don’t think it is intentional. They just advertise the positions and the positions are really good positions in terms of comparisons what a family doctor would earn in a family practice, having to carry an overhead versus being in the hospital where there is no overhead, there is vacation and there is all sorts of benefits for being in the hospital.”

McLoughlin said that makes it a challenge for clinics to compete with the hospital in recruiting doctors.

The Interior Health Authority (IHA) admits the hospital has hired more than 80 doctors in the past 18 months, but they are both local and out-of-town physicians.

“Family doctors are private practitioners,” IHA’s Executive Medical Director Dr. Mike Ertel said. “They can choose to work where they want.”

Ertel says IHA is working hard to help lure doctors to Kelowna and address the overall doctor shortage.

Whether they work at a walk-in in Kelowna or general family practice or do locums, I have no preference, we just want them here,” Ertel said.

For those who rely on walk-in clinics, there is now a new online tool that can help streamline those visits called medimap,which you can access here. It allows you to check wait times at clinics before choosing which one to go to. There is also one more piece of advice to help take the pressure off the typically very busy walk-in facilities.

“If people have a family doctor, out of courtesy for those who don’t, they should be seeing that family doctor,” McLoughlin said. “I know it’s convenient sometimes to come to the walk-in clinic, but it would help if people that already had their family doctor stuck with their own family doctor.”