This story is part of Scenario Important, a series from CBC British Columbia reporting on the boundaries men and women in this province deal with in accessing well timed and proper overall health treatment.
The only clinic serving a little community in B.C.’s Peace region is closing permanently on Saturday, creating it more complicated for seniors living there to obtain health-related expert services.
Early this thirty day period, the Fort St. John-centered North Peace Most important Treatment Clinic (NPPCC), whose physicians provide in-individual health care services at the Taylor Professional medical Clinic, said it would discontinue solutions setting up Oct. 1.
According to a post on Taylor Professional medical Clinic’s Facebook webpage, the NPPCC has agreed to provide the District of Taylor — about 18 kilometres south of Fort St. John, around the B.C.-Alberta border — with in-man or woman affected person care via the clinic since 2017.
The Taylor govt subsidizes the clinic’s procedure fees, while the physicians acquire from the province a preset month to month salary.
Nonetheless, the NPPCC has shifted to a cost-for-service payment product for physicians, according to Rob Fraser, mayor of Taylor.
Under the payment design, physicians are regarded self-used experts, and are paid by the province for every single office environment stop by, take a look at or operation. To remain afloat, they want to continually operate as a result of a significant-volume of sufferers and operate a enterprise at the exact same time.
In a letter tackled to the district in August, the NPPCC said it would be shifting to a diverse funding product and with this modify, it would “no longer be useful” to carry on supplying expert services at Taylor Health care Clinic.
“We have loved our five-yr stint working with the community and are grateful for the prospect to be of support,” the letter reads.
CBC Information achieved out to NPPCC for remark on the modify in payment product and the choice to discontinue services at Taylor Clinical Clinic, but did not listen to again in time for publication.
Worries for seniors
While patients in Taylor will even now have obtain to their doctors, they will now have to vacation to the NPPCC in Fort St. John for in-particular person treatment — which is poor news for aged sufferers who may not have their very own car or truck or obtain to a non-public vehicle, says Fraser.
There is not community transportation among Taylor and Fort St. John. About 150 residents, or 11 per cent of Taylor’s inhabitants, are age 65 and over.
“Sadly, [for] some of these entry-amount families, they only have one automobile, and so getting in a position to free of charge that motor vehicle up when mom or dad has gone to function with it — and free that car or truck up to go to Fort St. John — is challenging,” Fraser explained on CBC’s Daybreak North.
Fraser suggests council is contemplating other professional medical service selections for citizens, including telehealth, which Taylor Clinical Clinic provided between 2014 and 2017.
He states he hopes the province and the Northern Well being Authority could supply supports to help continue in-person health-related companies for Taylor residents.
In a composed assertion to CBC, Northern Health states it is checking out alternatives for Taylor Health-related Clinic to keep on operations, but did not specify what those possibilities ended up.
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