The Cure is a CBC News series examining strategies provinces and territories are using to tackle the primary care crisis.

A group of doctors in British Columbia’s northeast, with the help of city council, has saved a clinic from closure — and now has its sights set on bringing team-based care to a region where many people are without a family doctor. 

In July 2024, Dawson Creek, a city of about 12,000 near the B.C.-Alberta border, purchased the Eljen Medical Clinic. 

Mayor Darcy Dober said when the owner of the clinic put it up for sale, local physicians worried about the community’s loss of medical care.

“They also had a vision for a Primary Care Network,” he said. 

The South Peace Division of Family Practice, a community-based group of family doctors that serves Dawson Creek and the nearby communities of Chetwynd and Tumbler Ridge, proposed the city purchase the clinic at a time when much of the province — but especially northern and rural communities — were dealing with years-long shortages of health-care staff.

“We have a lot of unattached patients here — they don’t have family physicians,” said Dober. “So the big win will be that they will be attached to that facility.” 

Dr. Magda Du Plessis, chair of South Peace Division of Family Practice, said there are approximately 6,500 patients in the region who don’t have a family doctor. 

Hundreds of people without a doctor

Big changes are now underway at the clinic, which has a new name —The Rimrock Health Centre — as the South Peace Division of Family Practice works to turn it into a Primary Care Network. 

A primary care network, a strategy launched by the Ministry of Health in 2018 that has been expanding across the province ever since, brings together family physicians and other health-care professionals — such as dietitians, social workers, nurses, pharmacists, and mental health professionals — to provide comprehensive medical care.

“Having the City of Dawson Creek purchase the former medical clinic … has been so important to be able to move forward our primary care network and get it off the ground,” said Charleigh Rudy, executive director of the South Peace Division of Family Practice. 

Rudy says they are working on hiring 21 new health-care providers ranging from physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, dietitians and social workers to work at the Rimrock Health Centre. 

In a regional district meeting last year, Du Plessis says she sees this as having a significant impact on the number of unattached patients, as one provider— whether a nurse practitioner or family physician —can take on up to 800 patients. 

“We are looking to attach a portion of that 6,000 patients proportionally to the amount of providers that we can bring in through the Primary Care Network.” 

However, with all the work that entails, Rudy says it could take up to four years to get the network up and running. 

Team-based care

In the meantime, the Rimrock Health Centre building is already providing team-based maternity care as the Chickadee Maternity Collaborative Clinic moved into the building in November. 

Established four years ago, the Chickadee is a team of midwives, physicians and nurse practitioners who work together to provide maternity care in Dawson Creek. 

Haley Hayner, who is the only registered midwife currently working in the city, was contemplating leaving the community but decided to stay solely because she had the opportunity to join the Chickadee Clinic.

“Everyone was on call constantly for their own caseload, and you get high rates of burnout with a situation like that,” she said. 

“The community came together to figure out how to address that issue, and we we pooled our human resources and decided that we could all join one clinic, share the caseload and share the call schedule.” 

Hayner says the Chickadee Clinic now averages about 30 births per month, and she hopes there will be more opportunities for collaboration as the Rimrock Primary Care Network develops. 

“If you have multiple concerns, then you need to see, maybe, multiple practitioners. We’re really going to do our best to make sure that that’s all achieved in one visit.”

Dober says purchasing the clinic has been a “win” for the South Peace region, and the Chickadee clinic moving into the new space is the first step of residents being able to see the benefits of the Rimrock Health Centre.

“Once it is fully operational, it’ll be a huge asset not just for the community, but truly for the South Peace,” he said. 

Hayner said she hopes Chickadee can serve as an example of how a successful team-based care model can function in the region, but says one of the big challenges will be recruitment and retention. 

“I think everyone in the province is really trying to recruit more providers and more staffing, and so if we can build the ideal team environment and it’s a place where people want to stay working and maybe want to come and work, that it really helps with recruitment and retention,” said Hayner. 

Dober says the city is also part of a doctor-led committee to tackle its recruitment and retention problem. 

“There’s a lot of wheels spinning right now inside to help get it fully operational sooner than later so the doctors and health care workers in our community realize the importance of it and how much it can help the region.”