British Columbia’s health care crisis has reached Cortes Island. A number of complex factors led to the resignation of all three doctors working out of the Cortes Island Medical Clinic. Their contract ends on Sunday, March 31, 2024. 

“The  physicians that we’ve had in our physicians group are moving on to do things in their own lives. They’re starting practices elsewhere and it no longer fits for them to come here,” explained Bernice McGowan, on behalf of the Cortes Community Health Association (CCHA) board.

“We will not be shutting the doors of the clinic on April 1st.  That’s not in the foreseeable future. If our physicians leave, the worst case scenario is that we have a whole bunch of locums coming and we’ve been in this position before, where the only people that we had covering the practice were locums.”