CHARBONNEAU – New health care clinic in Kamloops is a good start

THE NEW URGENT and primary care centre is just what the doctor ordered. And what patients have been clamouring for.

Associations representing family doctors in British Columbia say that they want paid sick days, vacation coverage, extended health and dental benefits, and a pension plan.

Since doctors want the benefits of employees, the logical thing to do is to make them employees of the government and that’s just what the new clinic in Northills Shopping Centre does.

The clinic will employ teams consisting of two physicians, two nurse practitioners, four registered nurses, a licensed practical nurse and two to six medical office assistants depending on the time of day.

Patients will finally be able to get care in a reasonable time. The new clinic will help relieve the strain faced by the emergency room at Royal Inland Hospital and the care centre located on Columbia Street. Chances of getting in the Columbia clinic were close to zero from the day it opened.

Now both clinics will effectively double the number seen — 85,000 patient visits per year once fully operational.

Publicly owned and operated clinics are the way of the future.

The old model of doctor-operated businesses does not work. The fee-for-service business plan has left doctors overworked. Walk-in clinics in Kamloops in the past have folded due to the volume of people in need of care, the difficulty in hiring staff and insufficient funding through the old fee-for-service model.

Many new doctors want to practice medicine without the hassle of running a business. The fee-for-service means of income barely makes ends meet — and only when doctors put in long hours and see as many patients as possible.

However, Kamloops needs more than two walk-in clinics. There are ways in which publicly owned clinics can be built.

I previously suggested one in this column. It’s based on a model used by the Centre for Seniors Information Society in Kamloops to build an apartment on 6th and Victoria.  Full disclosure: I am the president of the society.

It works like this. BC Housing built the apartment and handed it over to us to operate. We pay the mortgage from rent collected. The government gets out of the messy business of collecting rent and evicting tenants who trash their apartments (it happens more than I wish). And because we are a non-profit society, we can manage the apartment economically.

A model similar to BC Housing could be established. I’ll call it “BC Clinics.”

BC Clinics would build clinics and hand them over to non-profit societies to staff and operate.

There is a similar model operating in Kamloops, although it’s privately built through donations. A non-profit society called STEPS operates Orchards Walk Medical clinic and two others, one in Sun Peaks. They hire medical staff and offer benefits. Until my doctor stopped practicing, I was a patient there.

Unlike my suggested BC Clinics, the non-profit society operating Orchards Walk Medical clinic relies on donations to cover overhead. Although it’s a worthy venture, finances for a non-profit society can be tenuous.

David Charbonneau is a retired TRU electronics instructor who hosts a blog at http://www.eyeviewkamloops.wordpress.com.