Vancouver Island city looks to attract family doctors with municipal job offers

COLWOOD, B.C. — A suburban British Columbia city is looking to ease its shortage of family doctors by hiring physicians and putting them on the community payroll.

The Victoria-area city of Colwood launched a first-in-Canada pilot project to recruit family doctors who will work out of a city-leased medical clinic and be paid as community employees, receiving full medical benefits, vacation and a pension, chief administrative officer Robert Earl said Wednesday.

The five-year pilot project aims to hire eight doctors and connect thousands of local residents with a physician, he said.

"Each of these physicians in our model could attach up to 1,250 Colwoodians to a family physician, and so the model could attach 10,000 Colwoodians," Earl said in an interview.

The city said in a statement the first doctor hired for the program is Dr. Cassandra Stiller-Moldovan, a family and sport medicine physician who is moving to Colwood from London, Ont.

"We're very, very excited to have our first doctor on board," Earl said. "We came to a (salary) number we thought was attractive. Our salary offer resonated to the point where we have managed to attract a physician."

While the doctors will be paid as Colwood employees, this 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.

Colwood Mayor Doug Kobayashi said it’s an appealing offer for doctors, who will be part of a supportive team with a focus on well-being, rather than on the business of running a clinic.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 18, 2024.

Dirk Meissner, The Canadian Press