North Shore clinics accepting new patients amid doctor shortage

It may be surprising, amid a severe doctor shortage in B.C. right now, but some clinics in North Vancouver are — on a temporary basis — accepting new patients.

Carefiniti has a couple of clinics, one on Marine Drive and the other in Lynn Valley, that are doing patient in-take right now. Medical Director Dr. Yashar Tashakkor echoes what many in his industry have been saying for months — the shortage is at a crisis point.

“We have a situation where there is a shortage of family physicians. There are many clinics that are looking to recruit them and so their decision is going to be based on a number of things. Where is the location of the clinic? What patient population it serves? How efficient is the clinic run? Do they get one administrative staff or two?”

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He says all clinics can do is offer the best working environment possible for doctors. What’s working for them, according to Tashakkor, is their set-up.

“We have a multi-location network model, where we have several physicians at different locations. And we have in-house specialists, including internal medicine specialist and pediatricians. This model is attractive to family physicians because if they want to go on vacation, for example, they can hand over their patients to peers who can look after medical emergencies or if they need a specialist’s advice, there’s an in-house specialist who can provide [that.]”

In other words, he feels the key to recruiting and retaining workers is to set themselves apart from other clinics.

“There are physicians that are looking to move to British Columbia. We have had success recruiting physicians from other provinces through advertisements in their local journals or online advertisements. I’ve been practicing medicine for almost 10 years and the environment has really changed. In this day and age, it’s really up to the clinics to do what they can to be more attractive to family physicians.”

Right now, he says they have six family doctors working full-time and two working part-time. He hopes to bringing two more on board in the next six months. Tashakkor says the goal is to expand their services but it’s a struggle to find an affordable space to do that.

Doctors of BC estimates about 1 million British Columbians still don’t have access to primary care and Tashakkor warns the situation is still dire.

“Even though we are recruiting doctors, we still don’t have enough physicians to be able to meet the demand. So, what happens with these patients is they end up in Urgent Care, even though they may not necessarily need an Urgent Care visit. That subsequently leads to a hospital visit, which may not be necessary either. We do know hospitals have their challenges as well, so it’s a ripple effect if the issue is not dealt with from the beginning it will have a negative impact on all aspects of health care.”

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Tashakkor says many patients coming off their long waitlist are overdue for help. Several are seniors and in some cases have been without a doctor for much of the pandemic.

“It’s overwhelming. We have had patients that are 70 or 80 years of age who lost their family physicians during COVID, or their family physician retired and they need medications. I’ve had many patients cry when they get a family physician. They are grateful. They are happy. It feels great. It really feels good to help. In reality, it shouldn’t be like this. I remember five or six years ago, it wasn’t like this, and most people did have a family physician.”

He is hopeful ongoing negotiations with the province, which largely revolve around the pay structure for doctors, go well. Tashakkor wants any agreements to be made with the input of family doctors.

Meantime, Health Minister Adrian Dix blames issues with the family physician model on the previous Liberal government. He says the provincial government and doctors are “close” to a solution but didn’t provide any hints on what that solution is or what that means.

Dix hopes people remain patient, adding the health-care system has been struggling with not only COVID-19, but the other public health emergency — the opioid crisis.

“The reality is in addition to the pressures of COVID-19, we have what is called a population pressure. We’re going to see twice as many people over 75 and that’s why we’re putting in place measures now, not just to improve things now but to improve things in the future,” he said.

“We’re doing more surgeries, more diagnostics, more primary care visits, more ambulance calls, and the system has increased to meet that. We’ve added, in two years, 30,000 people working in health care, which is extraordinary. And how do we know we’ve added them? Because we pay them, for the most part, so we count them and that’s the number.”

Dix adds a “significant number” of physicians have also accepted the province’s incentive to work in B.C., but again gave no specifics. He says the province will release more details about that soon. The province’s offer featured a “new-to-practice” contract valued at just over $295,000 for the first year, which is usually a second-year rate.