This family doctor is leaving B.C. Other physicians are among her 'orphaned' patients

This story is part of Situation Critical, a series from CBC British Columbia reporting on the barriers people in this province face in accessing timely and appropriate health care.

Dr. Anna Chodyra has crossed land and sea to practise medicine.

Originally from Poland, the 47-year-old first immigrated to Canada as an international medical graduate in 2001.

She did her residency in Calgary before crossing the Rockies in 2006, when she relocated to the small city of Port Moody in the Tri-Cities area of B.C.'s Lower Mainland, just east of Vancouver. She worked there for 13 years before following the Barnet Highway east to Coquitlam, where she joined Meadowbrook Family Practice.

The family doctor said she currently has a patient panel of 2,100 people — and she isn't sure where any of them will go when she, and her family, relocate to New Zealand this fall.

"It's a very difficult decision, knowing that I'm leaving my patients without finding someone to replace me, leaving them on their own," said Chodyra, adding that she never planned on leaving B.C.

"We tried to find a replacement physician, but we couldn't. Nobody is taking over practices anymore."

Chodyra closed her B.C. practice at the end of June, as she prepares to join a new family physician group in the small town of Waihi, about two hours southeast of Auckland. 

She said the decision stems from a need to be closer to her husband's family in Australia, and because of "the state of primary care in B.C.," including the province's current fee-for-service system and staffing shortages which she says will be less of a problem in New Zealand, where she will have five nurses and three doctors helping assist patients.

"Family doctors, we don't feel supported and we really feel undervalued," she said.

Her imminent departure, however, has sent shock waves throughout the Tri-Cities, as her patients scramble to find new family doctors amid a shortage, where an estimated one million British Columbians are already without a primary care physician.

The Fraser Northwest Division of Family Practice (FNDFP) — a non-profit organization that works with and supports family physicians in Anmore, Belcarra, Coquitlam, New Westminster, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody — said its membership has decreased seven per cent over the past year. It estimates that, across the six communities, there are 170 primary providers, roughly 49 of whom live in Coquitlam.

The non-profit's program director, Jessie Mather-Lingley, said that since 2014, Coquitlam has lost nearly 50 family practitioners. She said 15 of those have been since 2021, either due to retirement, relocation or changing roles within health care.

B.C.'s Ministry of Health said in a statement that it "is committed to ensuring all British Columbians have access to health care when they need it."