Lake Cowichan Mayor Tim McGonigle says the town has not found replacements for its only two family physicians, the second of whom is set to leave at the end of June.
McGonigle said he is approached “all the time by residents” asking what the town plans to do about the situation.
After Dr. David Froese, a family physician in the Cowichan Valley for more than three decades, retired at the end of March, a locum was secured to fill in, but only for a couple of months.
The other doctor, Dr. Wagdy Basily, who came to Canada from Egypt in 2012 and moved to Lake Cowichan in 2021, is scheduled to leave June 30, heading back to Ontario after failing to find a place for his family to practise their Christian Orthodox faith.
Concerned about the impending lack of physicians, McGonigle has contacted Health Ministry officials and met virtually with the parliamentary secretary of state for rural development, but said he has yet to see results.
The town is also working with the Duncan physician who owns the Lakeside Medical Clinic practice that serves the town and surrounding area of 6,500 people, 68 per cent of whom are seniors.
McGonigle said about 1,000 patients have been absorbed by physicians in Duncan, about 30 kilometres or a 20-minute drive away, but it’s a drop in the bucket and not an option for those who cannot drive.
“I think some of them have found other physicians in the Cowichan Valley, which are currently taking a number of patients, but we’re still going to be left with those who are not mobile and unable to drive, or with a transit strike can’t get transportation,” he said.
A transit strike, now in its fourth month, started in February after a dispute between Transdev, which provides transit services in the Cowichan Valley under a contract with B.C. Transit, and Unifor, which represents about 52 transit workers in Cowichan.
The longer patients go without a family doctor, the more pressure it will put on the Cowichan District Hospital emergency department, said McGonigle.
The mayor is hoping to see a team-based “edge” community health centre for the region — “edge” being the new buzzword for communities that serve as a business and service hub on the edge of major rural unincorporated areas.
McGonigle noted that some residents in the area are more than an hour’s driving distance from Cowichan District Hospital.
“There should be some sort of intermediate care that’s afforded within West Cowichan,” he said, pointing out the lakeside town’s population swells to 50,000 in the summer with vacationers, concerts and events.
The Health Ministry said Tuesday that Lake Cowichan has been identified as “a priority region for recruitment” for primary care.
The Cowichan Valley Division of Family Practice and health authority are “actively recruiting family physicians and nurse practitioners to ensure patients in Lake Cowichan receive the care they need,” the ministry said in a statement.
The ministry suggested local leaders employ tools such as the Community Healthcare System Support Playbook.
The “playbook,” released last year, suggests ways local governments can better attract and retain physicians, such as providing 24-hour daycare, transportation and housing options for doctors.
McGonigle said the town has already read the playbook and is trying everything “outside the box,” with the exception of the model Colwood has undertaken — a municipally administered medical clinic — because Lake Cowichan doesn’t have the tax base to do that.
B.C. Conservative Courtenay-Comox MLA Brennan Day, opposition critic for rural health, said that asking municipalities “to pick up the slack in the provision of health care is unacceptable.”
Day suggested taking money from health authority administration and putting allocation of financial and staffing resources back in the hands of local health areas.
“Relying on Victoria bureaucrats is not working and it’s clear they are not listening to those on the front lines,” said Day.
Lake Cowichan has 1.7 full-time-equivalent nurse practitioners who work out of the Lake Cowichan Health Unit, but doesn’t have an Urgent and Primary Care Centre for walk-ins, he said.
In 2022, about one million British Columbians didn’t have access to a family doctor, but the B.C. College of Family Physicians and B.C. Family Doctors recently put that number closer to 700,000, though nearly 40 per cent of family doctors are set to retire or reduce clinical hours within five years.
The Health Ministry said about 300,000 people have been connected to a family doctor or nurse practitioner since the Health Connect Registry launched province-wide in July 2023.
Day said each new attachment “is being undone pretty regularly” by a physician who retires or leaves due to burnout, noting two more doctors are set to leave the Comox Valley.
