Thanks to three new physicians who arrived in South Delta this year, another 3,866 people in Ladner and Tsawwassen now have family doctors.
Currently, 42 family doctors are practising in the area, three more than last year, said Lisa Wigzell, executive-assistant at the Delta Division of Family Practice.
Wigzell said all three new doctors have signed on to the Doctors of B.C.’s new-to-practice contract which means they must take on 800 patients by the end of their first year and then 1,250 after the second year. The contract is for new doctors and is only for two years. Full-time physicians must also provide a minimum of 1,680 hours of service a year.
“So that’s how we’re able to allocate so many patients because each doctor is taking on a fair amount of people,” Wigzell said.
As well, another doctor who’s been practising longer, is also taking on another 500 patients.
While three new doctors have arrived this year, two of them from the U.K., two other doctors in South Delta left their practices, with one returning home to Ireland and the other retiring.
Last year, the provincial government also tripled the number of seats to 96 in the practice-ready assessment program where foreign doctors can work as associate physicians on their way to becoming fully licensed.
“We still must work on getting people to come here. The main problem of course, is the cost of living for South Delta is very high,” Wigzell said.
New doctors are encouraged to set up into one of the existing nine clinics but there’s only so much space per clinic, she added.
The Delta Division of Family Practice doesn’t want to release the exact numbers of people on the waitlist for doctors because it’s constantly changing and not exact.
“Our waitlist is always going up, of course, because it’s hard to ever really catch up,” Wigzell said.
One of the largest factors is the number of people moving into the area, she said.
“I think as well, our community is an aging population as well. We have a lot of seniors in our community, and that also makes it difficult because those people do need doctors and they need doctors on a regular basis, so that’s another factor as well, that we are an aging population,” she said.
