The Cure is a series of CBC news that examines the strategies that the provinces and territories are using to address the primary care crisis.
A group of doctors in the northeast of British Columbia, with the help of the City Council, has saved a clinic of the closure, and now has an eye on providing team care to a region where many people do not have a family doctor.
In July 2024, Dawson Creek, a city of approximately 12,000 near the border of BC-Alberta, bought the Eljen medical clinic.
Mayor Darcy Dober said that when the clinic owner put him on sale, local doctors concerned about the loss of medical care of the community.
“They also had a vision for a primary care network,” he said.
The Division of Family Practices of South Peace, a community doctors community group that serves Dawson Creek and the nearby communities of Chetwynd and Tumbler Ridge, proposed the purchase of the city of the clinic at a time when much of the province, but especially the communities of the north and rural, were dealing with scarcity of health care personnel.
“We have many patients not united here, they don’t have family doctors,” said Dober. “Then, the great victory will be that they will join that installation.”
Dr. Magda du Plessis, president of the South Peace Family Practice Division, said there are approximately 6,500 patients in the region who do not have a family doctor.
Hundreds of people without a doctor
The big changes are now underway at the clinic, which has a new name, the Rimrock Health Center, since South Peace’s family practice division works to turn it into a primary care network.
A primary care network, a strategy launched by the Ministry of Health in 2018 that has expanded throughout the province since then, brings together family doctors and other health professionals, such as dietitians, social workers, nurses, pharmacists and mental health professionals, to provide comprehensive medical care.
“Make Dawson Creek buy the old medical clinic … It has been so important to advance in our primary care network and take it off,” said Charleight Rudy, executive director of the Family Practice Division of La Paz de Sur.
Rudy says they are working on the hiring of 21 new medical care providers who range from doctors, practical nurses, nurses, dietitians and social workers to work at the Rimrock Health Center.
In a regional district meeting last year, Du Plessis says that he sees that this has a significant impact on the number of patients not attacked, such as a supplier, either a practitioner or a family doctor, can assume up to 800 patients.
“We are looking to attach a portion of those 6,000 patients proportionally to the number of suppliers that we can bring through the primary care network.”
However, with all the work he implies, Rudy says he could take up to four years starting the network.
Team -based
Meanwhile, the Rimrock Health Center Building is already providing maternity -based maternity care, since the Chickadee Maternity Collaboration Clinic moved to the building in November.
Established four years ago, Chickadee is a team of midwives, doctors and practicing nurses who work together to provide maternity care in Dawson Creek.
Haley Hayner, who is the only registered midwife who was currently working in the city, was contemplating to leave the community, but decided to stay only because he had the opportunity to join the Chickadee Clinic.
“Everyone constantly on duty for their own charge of cases, and you get high rates of exhaustion with a situation like that,” he said.
“The community joined to discover how to address that problem, and we group our human resources and decide that we could all join a clinic, share the charge of cases and share the call schedule.”
Hayner says that the Chickadee clinic now averages about 30 births per month, and hopes there will be more collaboration opportunities as the Rimrock Primary Care Network develops.
“If you have multiple concerns, then you need to see, perhaps, several practitioners. We will really do our best to ensure that everything is achieved in a single visit.”
Dober says that buying the clinic has been a “victory” for the South Peace Region, and the Chickadee clinic that moves to the new space is the first step of the residents that can see the benefits of the Rimrock Health Center.
“Once it is completely operational, it will be a great asset not only for the community, but really for the Peace of the South,” he said.
Hayner said that Chickadee can serve as an example of how an attention model based on the successful team can work in the region, but says that one of the great challenges will be recruitment and retention.
“I think everyone in the province is really trying to recruit more suppliers and more personal, so if we can build the ideal team environment and it is a place where people want to continue working and maybe they want to come to work, it really helps with recruitment and retention,” said Hayner.
Dober says that the city is also part of a committee led by the doctor to address its recruitment and retention problem.
“There are many wheels turning at this time to help it be completely operational sooner rather than later, so the doctors and health workers of our community realize the importance and how much can help the region.”
