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May 08, 2022 - 12:00 PM
A Kamloops doctor whose changing medical careers and closing his practice thinks it's a good idea for clinics to be managed separately by business professionals and not doctors.
Dr. Hancke de Kock, who has served as a family doctor in the community since 2009, decided to take a job in addictions management and steer his career in a different direction.
He currently has 1,500 patients, which will be left without a family doctor when the practice closes.
“They do understand and some are unhappy which is understandable but a majority of them are supportive,” he said.
“It’s literally going from one crisis to the next crisis,” de Kock said, adding he feels he can contribute to the field. He is joining the virtual addictions medicine clinic that is based out of Kamloops.
“There are too many patients and too few physicians,” he said. “It’s important to have a family physician, I just don’t know where to find them.”
It’s difficult for new doctors to come out of residency and open a business, especially with no business experience, he said.
Kiffer Walker, managing partner and co-owner of Evolve Allied Health that oversees four clinics in the Central Okanagan, said they’ve had no issue hiring family doctors but he thinks it’s because the doctors don’t have to manage the business on top of practicing.
READ MORE: Kelowna, Lake Country find new way to get doctors amid shortage
“I think that’s a great idea,” de Kock said.
A part-time physician did retire from Lake Country last year but another full-time doctor has been hired and will start in June, Walker said. They currently have 40 doctors within their four clinics.
“There are tens of thousands of people that don’t have family doctors in the Okanagan right now,” he said, adding there was a number of retirements last year.
“As an industry, there are a lot of people that don’t have a family doctor… it’s been that way for a long time,” he said.
Close to a million British Columbians, or one in five people, do not have a family doctor and cannot get one, according to B.C. Family Doctors.
The Ministry of Health did not return a request for how many doctors are needed in the Thompson Okanagan region.
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