Kamloops’ doctor shortage has just gone up by one more GP as popular physician suddenly announces he’ll close practice

By MEL ROTHENBURGER

The same day Health Minister Terry Lake announced new incentives for doctors to practice in rural B.C., hundreds of patients in a not-so-rural B.C. centre — Kamloops — got word they’ll soon lose their family physician.

Dr. Paul Yanko, a popular and respected GP in Kamloops for 26 years, and in Logan Lake before that, announced in a letter to his patients Wednesday a sudden decision to  close his practice May 8 due to medical reasons.

Yanko said he’s looking for a replacement “but as you can imagine the task is very difficult.” He encouraged his patients to “proactively search” for a new family doctor.

Yanko shares offices with Chip Bantock and Alice Huang, but he said both have full practices and can’t absorb any of the patient load. The average patient load for B.C. family doctors is said to be between 1,200 and 1,500. Doctors in B.C. (formerly the B.C. Medical Association) estimates there are 220,000 British Columbians without a family doctor.

Estimates on the number of Kamloops residents without a family doctor varies wildly. In a 2006 newspaper article, Yanko said his office was receiving two to five calls every day from people looking for a doctor. The same story quoted Dr. David Poulin, director of medical services for the Thompson-Cariboo-Shuswap Health Services Area, as estimating there were 3,600 Kamloops residents without a doctor, down from 12,000 five years before.

But by last year, published estimates ranged between 15,000 and 30,000 people looking for a doctor in Kamloops. The news last summer that six new doctors would open practices in Kamloops was celebrated, with Venture Kamloops proclaiming they would “help to make our community an even more attractive city for people to invest in” — until it was revealed there were 15 vacancies and there would actually be a deficit.

That left the number of GPs at about 60. Dr. Shirley Sze, co-chair of the Thompson Region Division of Family Practice, declined last year to put an estimate on the number of doctorless Kamloops residents.

Yanko has said one of the problems contributing to the decade-long shortage — often characterized as “severe” — is that only 25 per cent of those graduating with medical degrees want to go into family medicine.

He said in his letter Wednesday some of his patients have been with him for more than 35 years. “Practicing medicine has been the fulfillment of a lifelong dream,” he wrote. “Ending this doctor-patient relationship is much more difficult than I ever could have imagined.”

Comments by patients on the RateMDs.com website typically rate Yanko very high for knowledge and compassion, and have often expresed the hope he wouldn’t be retiring any time soon.

Yanko moved from Logan Lake to take over the practice of Dr. Lloyd Nixon when Nixon retired in 1989. A locum has been filling in for Yanko for the past couple of weeks.

At one point, the provincial government pledged that every B.C. resident would have a family doctor by 2015. Lake recently acknowledged that promise is well behind schedule.

He announced Wednesday a scholarship program to encourage more doctors to locate in rural areas after they finish medical school. The medical students are eligible for individual awards of $5,000 to support their pursuit of practising rural medicine.

“This new scholarship fund reflects government’s focus on supporting health care in rural communities,” Lake said.