Image Credit: ADOBE STOCK

The shortage of family doctors has been an ongoing and growing concern across the country but no more so than in small towns like Sicamous in the Shuswap.

It's gone from facing a complete loss of family doctors in the community to being on the brink of building the $10 million Secwépemc (Shuswap) Healing Centre because it now needs to expand medical facilities.

A few years ago the community's long-serving doctor was preparing to leave and was doing his best find a replacement for the district with a population of around 3,000.

“We knew that our doc was going to retire,” Sicamous Mayor Colleen Anderson told iNFOnews.ca. “He was looking for other doctors to step in or help him and it just wasn’t happening. That’s not where the trend was going. Docs don’t want to own private practices anymore.”

Feeling it had no choice, the district did the stepping in, buying the medical building and taking over the practice.

“Dr. Jack Beach, this was his practice for 45 years,” Karen Eastland, administrator of the Sicamous Community Health Centre that will be rebranded when it moves into the new facility, told iNFOnews.ca. “He was a typical old-school kind of doctor. He and his wife moved to a small community and started a practice and set up a life. The way it used to be.”

That style of family practice is well beyond its “best before date,” she said, echoing the sentiments Dr. Marjorie Docherty, former president of the BC College of Family Physicians.

“For a lot of the new young doctors coming out (of medical school), what they want is a start-up clinic where, perhaps, the government or health authority organizes the clinic for them and they come and work it,” she said in a previous interview with iNFOnews.ca.

READ MORE: Why thousands of Thompson-Okanagan residents can’t find a family doctor

That's just what Sicamous council did. It took over the administration of the clinic and since Eastland arrived in May 2021 they’ve seen it grow to two physicians and a nurse practitioner.

Construction of the new healing centre is expected to start in March with the hope of not only more doctors but also more centralized health care services in the community.

While Anderson talked about Sicamous’ beautiful setting on Shuswap Lake as a major attractant to the new doctors, she also said that lifting the administration duties off the backs of doctors was key to bringing more in.

“The doctors come in, they see their patients,” Eastland said. “Obviously, there’s lots of tasks that need to be done off hours outside the clinic, that’s just the nature of it. But as far as running the business, the HR, paying the bills, making sure the lights are on, all that basic administrative stuff of running a business – they don’t have to worry about our photocopier wasn’t paid for last month, whatever.”

There’s three medical office assistants working 2.2 full-time equivalent positions along with Eastland as administrator.

The existing facility has one full-time, permanent physician who lives in Salmon Arm.

Artist rendering of the new Shuswap (Secwépemc) Healing Centre in Sicamous.

Image Credit: Submitted/District of Sicamous

The second doctor was hired through the International Medial Graduate Candidate program. That brings in new, usually foreign-trained, doctors who are required to work two years before they can move to a new location.

That doctor is leaving in March but a new foreign-trained doctor is coming in September under the Practice Ready Assessment Program.

That program is focused on more experienced doctors. It requires a three-year residency but is also geared to people who know the community they are moving to and, therefore, are more likely to become permanent residents.

The idea from the beginning was for the health centre to be self-supporting.

“We have a plan to be in the black in five years and we’re ahead of that schedule by about three years,” Eastland said. “We’re doing well. We’re certainly in the red a little bit. Taxpayers do absorb a little bit of it but way less than our recreation budget.”

For the new healing centre, 78% of the $10 million cost so far is being paid through grants. While there's some taxpayer impact, the goal is to not only break even, but to be able to put money into reserve funds for future replacement costs.

The new healing centre is 15,000 square feet with 3,000 square feet of commercial space to rent out.

The hope is that Interior Health will take that space, consolidating its laboratory and other local services there.

The main unresolved question, Eastland said, is how long they wait for Interior Health to make up its mind before turning to the wait list of others interested in taking space in the building.

The project has not been without controversy.

Since the Secwépemc First Nation will have part of the building for traditional indigenous healing, some in the community assumed that meant a residential rehab centre, which is not the case.

Others were concerned about the use of property on Main Street that is an open space sometimes used for community events and viewed by some as a park.

“It never was a park,” Anderson said. “Here’s where people got confused. When we bought that property in 2015 or 2016, it was Main Street commercial. We never changed it. The mayor at that time may have suggested we might change it because we didn’t know what we were going to do with it, but because it’s such a great location on Main Street it will add a vibrancy to our downtown as well.”

What is essential is for this effort to keep family doctors in Sicamous.

“It’s key to mayor and council to make sure that we have healthcare in our community for our community,” Anderson said. “This is a big thing with council.”

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