Doctor's stethoscope
Health

Proposed Discovery Island Community Health Centre.

 The Quadra, Cortes, and Surge Narrows communities, as well as the Klahoose and We Wai Kai First Nations, have sent the BC Ministry of Health an application for funding to set up a Discovery Island Community Health Centre. 

“It offers stability for practitioners. It offers leadership stability through a joint board and a hired executive director. It offers some economies of scale in terms of practitioners being shared and supplies being shared. It offers a shared medical record between the communities. Potentially, one of the things is using video conferencing as opposed to an in-person visit, if that’s appropriate. It’s community driven, it doesn’t involve Victoria telling remote communities what works for them, because that generally doesn’t work for them,” explained Bernice McGowan, President of the Cortes Community Health Association (CCHA) and a member of the planning committee for the proposed Health Centre. 

Cortes Currents: Has there been any opposition to this idea?   

Bernice McGowan: “We have not had significant pushback or negative input from anybody saying, ‘no, this is a terrible idea and you shouldn’t be doing it.’”

Cortes Currents: What are the challenges? 

Bernice McGowan: “The first one is would there be adequate funding for what we need to do?”

Cortes Currents: How did this idea come into being?

Bernice McGowan: “In terms of Cortes Island, we have communicated this to our community several times in newsletters and Tideline articles over the last few years.” 

“To summarize, three years ago, we found ourself in a position on Cortes where we couldn’t find a doctor to come to replace the group of three who had been serving us for several years and had decided to do other things with their lives. We went to various island health and government people for help, and they suggested that we look at developing a community health center model along with Quadra and the other communities. It was like, well, that’s the only thing they could suggest that we do.”

“So we did have meetings. We developed a proposal and we sent it in. For us, the impetus was that we needed to have reliable primary care, like a doctor, a nurse practitioner, whatever,  available for our community having had that for over 20 years. Quadra at that point was fairly stable, they had four primary practitioners working under various models , but they are in more of a crisis at this point, having lost or potentially losing some of their primary care providers.”

“In trying to solve this one problem of getting a doctor, we also got excited about what the community health center model actually does.”

“On Cortes, I’d say that we are already doing a lot of this. We already operate in a team-based approach to our care as opposed to you seeing your family doctor and that’s all you see.”

“A community health center has several defining facets. One is that it involves team-based care. You’re not just seeing one person. There’s a requirement that you are also looking at the social determinants of health.”

“There are lots of things that affect your health other than just having a disease. Things like access to healthcare, access to healthy food, transportation to appointments, housing and also things related to particular childhood events.”

“We’ve always had that in our mandate and to a certain degree, we collaborate with other organizations on those things.”

“Physicians and nurse practitioners prefer not to run their own business and be single practitioners. They want to work in a team-based environment.”

“It will also give some stability of leadership, having one central board of directors, one central society. What that society is has not been worked out. It’s not necessarily the Cortes Community Health Association. It could be a new one where they are overseeing the community health center for a region, as opposed to just one community, and also hiring an executive director.” 

“One of the big things we would be looking at is a shared medical record with at least one of the clinics on Quadra. The other clinic probably wouldn’t join into that, but he’s not averse to being part of it to a certain degree.”

“So if you could get a telephone appointment on Quadra, they would have access to your medical records to look at what has been done. At the moment, they use a completely different medical record than we do.”

Cortes Currents: So what’s next? 

Bernice McGowan: “We’re in a bit of a holding pattern so this would serve as a bit of an update to our community.”

“In March, the application was submitted to the government, which is the body that decided whether to fund the project or not. We haven’t heard anything from them. We know that they have it, but the government is undertaking a huge review of medical services in BC since the last election and particularly, relating to us, of primary care services.”

“The NDP made certain agreements with the Green party and that process of review is still in progress. We have taken part in some meetings and given our feedback.”

“We’ve recently sent out a letter to politicians and people who have some influence, including MLA Anna Kindy. That’s part of why we invited her here in September, to let her see what we’re doing, basically saying, we’re still here, we still want to do this. Hopefully they’ll come to us and say, yes, we want to give you some money to develop this further.”

“We’ve been speaking with the director of Primary Care Strategies as well as a bunch of other people. There’s also a nonprofit organization called the BC Association of Community Health Centers, who is very active in promoting community health centers across the province as a really viable model to serve certain populations, and rural populations are certainly part of that.”

“The Southern Gulf Islands of Pender, Galiano, Saturna and Mayne are very interested in what we’re doing and seiing if that kind of model could potentially work for them as well.”

Links of Interest:

Top image credit: Doctor’s stethoscope – Photo by Adorable Dude via Flickr (Public Domain)

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