Barely a year after finally finding a family doctor, these Victoria patients have lost theirs
CBC
Patients at an urgent and primary care centre in Victoria, B.C., are feeling disappointed and abandoned after several doctors at the clinic have announced their departures within 18 months of opening day.
The James Bay Urgent and Primary Care Centre, which opened in April 2020, has had at least three family doctors leave or announce plans to leave since August.
Urgent and primary care centres, or UPCCs, are part of the B.C. government's efforts to get primary health care for more British Columbians. The centres are both funded and run publicly, as opposed to traditional doctor's offices, which are private businesses.
B.C. has the second highest rate of residents without a regular health-care provider. According to Statistics Canada, that rate was 17.7 per cent in 2019, up from 16.2 per cent in 2015. Only Quebec fares worse.
Island Health, which operates the James Bay clinic, would not confirm how many doctors or nurse practitioners have left since it opened, nor how many have been replaced.
But for three patients who had been ecstatic to finally have a doctor of their own, the disappointment of losing their doctors just a short time later has been hard to take.
Elaine Laberge lives in poverty and felt her health couldn't be managed by quick visits at walk-in clinics.
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