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City staff are suggesting on providing tax exemptions and ways to allow family clinics to open faster as 41,000 Kamloops residents are without a family doctor.

“This number is over 53,000 if we include surrounding areas such as Sun Peaks and Barriere,” said the city’s external relations liaison Sarah Candido in Tuesday’s council meeting, Sept. 27.

Representatives from the Thompson Division of Family Practice, Royal Inland Hospital Foundation and the Supporting Team Excellence with Patients Society came to council in June and asked for the city’s help to improve family physician recruitment.

Since then some actions have been taken while others have been dropped, and the collaborative is still looking at what changes can be made to assist with the work.

“The reasons for the family physician shortage are varied, many and the solutions are often complex,” Candido said.

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According to a council report, Interior Health recruits physicians to work at the hospital, relying on organizations like the Thompson Division of Family Practice to recruit physicians for private practices.

Current plans include representatives from Venture Kamloops and the Thompson Division of Family Practice recruiters attending a large national conference for physicians to seek candidates, network, and encourage physicians to come to Kamloops and open a clinic or practice.

The collaborative team is exploring possibilities around revitalization and permissive tax exemptions for new and existing family practices and clinics, and discussing potential spaces and locations for clinics that would be best supported by the community and other medical services.

They are also considering “front of the line” service for potential clinics and practices, meaning the city would prioritize the processing of administration requirements, like municipal inspections and permitting, for practitioners trying to open clinics, to get them open more quickly.

Staff are working internally and with the delegation partners to seek best practices in making this happen, according to the report.

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The team is also working on a collaborative booklet, last updated in 2018, that offers digital content to download and provides a look at the cultural and recreational landscape of the city and surrounding areas to “entice physicians to take a closer look at Kamloops as a great place to open a medical practice and for families to put down roots and make memories.”

An early idea was for the city to provide funding in exchange for a physician’s agreement to come to Kamloops and open a family practice, but it was later dropped. Under the Community Charter, providing a direct financial benefit to a private business is not permitted.

Candido said a big hurdle to physician recruitment is their pay, B.C. physicians have the third lowest gross income in the country, but that is negotiated at the provincial level.

“Physicians in B.C. are paid on a fee-for-service basis and the most common fee charged is $31 per patient regardless of the patient’s complexities,” she said. “It does not account for administration time to do things updating a patient’s records.

Physicians must pay overhead office costs for utilities and staff and those costs can take upwards of 30% of the fee per patient.”

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She said Doctors of B.C. and the Ministry of Health are working on a new physician compensation model which is expected to be made public between Oct. 2022 and Jan. 2023.

Christian said he believed council also needs to ensure Kamloops is a desirable place to live in order to attract professionals like family physicians.

“Everything that we do as a council to ensure things like active transportation and support for the arts and support for the Tournament Capital brand and nature parks and things like that feeds into that piece which makes Kamloops a desirable location, and I think we ought not want to lose sight of that fact.”

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