Vancouver Island mayor’s ‘crazy’ plan to recruit doctors sparks interest

A British Columbia community’s “out-of-the-box” plan to ease its family doctor shortage by hiring physicians as city employees is sparking interest from across Canada, says Colwood Mayor Doug Kobayashi.

The mayor said the community has hired its first family doctor for a city-operated medical clinic, and the Victoria-area city is looking to hire seven more under the first-in-Canada pilot project.

The family doctors will be paid as community employees, receiving full medical benefits, vacation and a pension, he said.

Some people called the plan “crazy,” when it was first proposed last year, but now it’s receiving interest from other communities across the country that are also suffering shortages of family medics, Kobayashi said in an interview Friday.

“I can tell you right now, the phone, texts, emails, it’s just going off like crazy from all the other municipalities,” said Kobayashi. “They call me curious about, what the heck we’re doing.”

The Colwood initiative is appealing to family doctors because those recruits become part of a supportive team with a focus on well-being, rather than the business of running a clinic, Kobayashi said.

While the doctors will be paid as Colwood employees, the program will be funded by provincial revenue billed by the clinic through the Ministry of Health in the same way doctors in other clinics bill for their time and office assistants.

Kobayashi said he originally proposed the concept to the B.C. government in the summer of 2023, where it was quickly given the green light to explore.

He delivered the plans to B.C.’s Ministry of Health on a Monday morning and by the noon hour, he received a call from former health minister Adrian Dix wanting to discuss the initiative.

Colwood estimates each new family doctor can be connected with 1,250 local residents and total up to 10,000 patient connections once the program is fully operational.

“It’s been quite the adventure, but we got there, and I’m doing what I said I was going to do,” said Kobayashi. “People thought I was a crazy guy. I am. I’m an out-of-the-box thinker. But this is so logical.”

Dr. Cassandra Stiller-Moldovan, who will be the clinic’s first family doctor, said she and her family are moving to Vancouver Island from London, Ont.

Stiller-Moldovan, who was shovelling snow off her driveway Friday in Ontario, said she’s looking forward to living and practising medicine on the West Coast without having the extra duties of operating an office.

“For me it was a great life fit, both for myself professionally, but for myself personally,” she said. “I have a young daughter and a spouse and this really was kind of a perfect model for me to really focus on the thing I really love to do, which is take care of patients. To me it really was a no-brainer.”

Stiller-Moldovan said it was also appealing to be just a doctor and not an office boss with worries about overhead and bills.

At the Colwood clinic she said she will receive paid vacations, sick leave and maternity benefits paid by her employer.

Ahmer Karimuddin, president of Doctors of BC, said the Colwood plan is a “bold” initiative in an era of physician shortages.

He said the old model where a family doctor looks to set up a practice in a local mall or shopping centre is outdated and communities need to look for new ways to attract physicians.

“I want to really congratulate the City of Colwood for being bold and brave enough to try something that’s out of the ordinary,” said Karimuddin. “Across the country, throughout Canada we’re seeing a shortage of family doctors and we need to think of out-of-the-box solutions that are different than what was happening in the past.”

Doctors of BC is an association of more than 16,000 physicians, residents, and medical students in B.C.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 20, 2024.