The City of Colwood has hired the first family doctor for its municipally run Colwood Medical Clinic, which it calls a first in sa国际传媒.
Colwood Mayor Doug Kobayashi called the hiring a “great Christmas gift for us and our community,” adding: “It’s been quite the journey to get to where we are now.”
Dr. Cassandra Stiller- Moldovan, a family doctor and sports medicine physician from London, Ont., has already purchased a home in the area, the mayor said.
She’s due to arrive in mid-January with her partner and two-year-old daughter and hopes to open her practice in February, the mayor said.
Stiller-Moldovan will be based in Colwood Commons, the hub of the growing Royal Bay neighbourhood, where space has been leased from Pure Integrative Pharmacy and renamed Colwood Medical Clinic.
About 70 per cent of Colwood’s 22,000 residents who responded to a city survey last year said having a family doctor was their highest priority.
The goal is for the clinic to be able to take on 10,000 patients from an estimated 14,000 people in Colwood who currently don’t have a family doctor.
After talking with physicians, the city concluded that if it could take over some of the paperwork and business aspects of a family practice and provide a pension and benefits, it might encourage physicians to stay, Kobayashi said.
The city will handle the paperwork, pensions, human resources and financial services and benefits, as it already does for other employees.
“The city is really well-equipped to do administration,” said Kobayashi. “We are taking away all the business side for the doctors so they can practise being a physician eight hours a day.”
The pilot project involves hiring eight family doctors — a second physician has already expressed strong interest — and four medical office assistants, which is ongoing. One medical clinic director and one operations manager have already been hired.
“I’m just thrilled — it’s just thinking outside the box to truly serve our citizens,” said Kobayashi, who helped host Stiller-Moldovan when she visited recently.
Kobayashi has given the pilot project two years to hire all eight physicians but is optimistic the city will beat its own target.
The city set up a booth at the Family Medicine Forum at the Vancouver Convention Centre last month, where more than 100 family doctors “signed up with an expression of interest,” said Kobayashi. “It was overwhelming.”
Kobayashi said he is not aware of any other municipality in sa国际传媒 or the country doing what Colwood is doing. “This is groundbreaking.”
Staff will be paid as municipal employees, funded through the Health Ministry.
The city says physicians and medical staff will have paid vacation and maternity/paternity leave, and will receive full medical benefits and a defined pension from the municipal pension plan. Start-up costs of $500,000 from the city’s reserve funds were budgeted for the pilot project.
The city produced a to attract doctors to the area and a physician open until December 2026 advertises a two-year term with a possibility of extension.
The posting says the annual gross salary for the full-time position is $280,000, less statutory deductions, adding the city offers a comprehensive benefits package.
The annual salary will be pro-rated for part-time hours and/or partial years of service, it says.
It also says the physician will report to the city-appointed medical director, and work collaboratively within a team of physicians and other clinic staff, “providing quality patient-centred medical care to clinic patients in alignment with the clinic’s professional service standards and unique business model as set by the City of Colwood.”
One of the advisers on the project is a former executive director of the Shoreline Medical clinics in Sidney and Brentwood Bay, said Kobayashi. The clinics, opened by a charitable organization, grew their physician list to approximately 25 from five in 2015.
“We’re not going into this blind,” said the mayor. “It’s based on good data.”
Residents without a family doctor can add their names to the province’s and those with a Colwood postal code will be matched through the with a family doctor at the Colwood Clinic, the mayor said.
New patients will be selected by the physician via interviews, with the goal of establishing a manageable range of ages and health-care needs.
