Kamloops area has BC’s longest family doctor wait times

Communities across BC have decried a lack of family physicians for several years, but it’s in Kamloops where the shortage is most obvious.

That according to provincial government data in which the Thompson region has the longest wait times and the highest proportion of people on the primary care waitlist.

For Kamloops and the surrounding area, people are waiting nearly two-and-a-half years on average for a doctor, but some are waiting beyond five years. The city hasn’t had a walk-in medical clinic for years and as of last winter there were 26,330 people on the waitlist.

With roughly a quarter of the region’s population waiting for a family doctor, that’s more than almost any other region across the province, according to the data released through a Freedom of Information request.

In recent years, the province has changed its payment model for family physicians, opened more urgent care clinics and hired hundreds more doctors. While the changes haven’t made a substantial dent in the long list of British Columbians without a family doctor, some municipalities are looking to open municipally-owned clinics.

Kamloops city council is expected to consider a business case on its own medical clinic sometime this year.

In the meantime, the city and surrounding communities like Barriere, Sun Peaks and Chase are among the most difficult places to get a primary care provider.

The Thompson region’s wait is an average 872 days, while the top five per cent extends beyond 1,925 days, according to Ministry of Health data.

In the Central Okanagan there were 15,782 people on the province’s Health Connect Registry as of last November, where there are around 250,000 residents. People have waited an average 379 days to get a doctor, while the top five per cent have been on the list for 1,034 days.

Aside from the small gulf island area of Gabriola, no other region has average wait times beyond two years. Even the Victoria metropolitan area, with the province’s longest list of around 43,000 people, averages 479 days.

For the Thompson region, the best options for the thousands of unattached patients are to use one of the two urgent and primary care clinics, the private clinic Kinetic or the Royal Inland Hospital emergency department.