B.C. city buys health clinic to help community retain and recruit new doctors

The Cure is a CBC News series examining strategies provinces and territories are using to tackle the primary care crisis.

A group of doctors in British Columbia's northeast, with the help of city council, has saved a clinic from closure — and now has its sights set on bringing team-based care to a region where many people are without a family doctor. 

In July 2024, Dawson Creek, a city of about 12,000 near the B.C.-Alberta border, purchased the Eljen Medical Clinic. 

Mayor Darcy Dober said when the owner of the clinic put it up for sale, local physicians worried about the community's loss of medical care.

"They also had a vision for a Primary Care Network," he said. 

The South Peace Division of Family Practice, a community-based group of family doctors that serves Dawson Creek and the nearby communities of Chetwynd and Tumbler Ridge, proposed the city purchase the clinic at a time when much of the province — but especially northern and rural communities — were dealing with years-long shortages of health-care staff.

"We have a lot of unattached patients here — they don't have family physicians," said Dober. "So the big win will be that they will be attached to that facility." 

Dr. Magda Du Plessis, chair of South Peace Division of Family Practice, said there are approximately 6,500 patients in the region who don't have a family doctor. 

Big changes are now underway at the clinic, which has a new name —The Rimrock Health Centre — as the South Peace Division of Family Practice works to turn it into a Primary Care Network. 

A primary care network, a strategy launched by the Ministry of Health in 2018 that has been expanding across the province ever since, brings together family physicians and other health-care professionals — such as dietitians, social workers, nurses, pharmacists, and mental health professionals — to provide comprehensive medical care.

"Having the City of Dawson Creek purchase the former medical clinic … has been so important to be able to move forward our primary care network and get it off the ground," said Charleigh Rudy, executive director of the South Peace Division of Family Practice. 

Rudy says they are working on hiring 21 new health-care providers ranging from physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, dietitians and social workers to work at the Rimrock Health Centre. 

In a regional district meeting last year, Du Plessis says she sees this as having a significant impact on the number of unattached patients, as one provider— whether a nurse practitioner or family physician —can take on up to 800 patients. 

"We are looking to attach a portion of that 6,000 patients proportionally to the amount of providers that we can bring in through the Primary Care Network."