Dale Boyd

Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The Okanagan-Similkameen Regional Hospital District is yet again deferring a two-year long discussion on whether the district wants to raise taxes in an effort to recruit doctors.

At their Dec. 17 meeting the regional hospital district was again unable to come to a final decision on whether or not the district should look into broadening their mandate to fund clinics to assist in recruitment of physicians.

With approximately 12,000 residents in the regional district without access to a family doctor, Mayor of Oliver Martin Johansen noted the problem is particularly present in the South Okanagan where three doctors have now left to practice elsewhere or retire. One-third of general practitioners are expected to retire within the next five years as well.

While the Town of Oliver is working with physicians to open a primary care clinic, and have identified a location, the issue of physician recruitment  is sure to be ongoing and affect communities up and down the valley, Johansen said.

“It’s affecting everybody, so we can either put our head in the sand or we can actually investigate and understand what the options are. I think to make a decision not to support this without the information is not correct,” Johansen said.

“It’s interesting to me that it’s only a concern if it’s affecting you. If everything’s good in your area it’s like ‘let’s just wait a couple years,’ we’ve got a problem right now in Oliver and it’s not just Oliver,” Johansen told his fellow board directors. “Don’t think of it as an Oliver problem. It’s a South Okanagan problem that’s going to affect a huge number of people.”

While the board was voting on whether or not regional district staff should look into options for funding physician recruitment, multiple board members reiterated their caution about increasing the tax burden on residents.

“I think we definitely should stay away from getting involved financially in physician recruitment,” said Keremeos Mayor Manfred Bauer. “The other one, the development of primary care clinics, is something that the province developed and it is definitely a provincial mandate, not ours.”

“If however (the province) can come out and designate all the primary care clinics in a way that we can contribute then we could perhaps shift some of that existing budget that’s in the hospital district, and allocate some of that to the primary care clinics I would be OK with that.”

The South Okanagan Similkameen Division of Family Practice (SOSDFP), a membership organization for primary care providers in the area which supports team-based care connecting physicians and health care providers, previously told the board some key factors for recruiting doctors in the area. Those included a support network of health professionals and facilities and that doctors would like to focus on providing healthcare to residents, not being a business owner or running a practice.

The board was again unable to decide on the key issue of whether they would like to explore raising property taxes to fund physician recruitment. With the discussion running long, the decision was deferred until 2021.