Vancouver Island city looks to attract family doctors with municipal job offers

By The Canadian Press on December 18, 2024.

Medical tools are pictured in an exam room at a health clinic in Calgary, Alta., July 14, 2023.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

COLWOOD, B.C. – The suburban city of Colwood, B.C., on Vancouver Island, says it has hired its first family doctor in a new approach to easing the community’s shortage of physicians.

Colwood Mayor Ken Kobayashi says in a statement that it has initiated a first-in-Canada pilot project where it recruits family doctors and puts them on the city payroll, offering full medical benefits, vacation and a pension.

He says the doctors will practise out of the Colwood Clinic, set to open next year and be part of the city’s goal of hiring eight doctors within three years.

The first doctor to participate in the Colwood program is Dr. Cassandra Stiller-Moldovan, a family and sport medicine physician who is moving to Colwood from London, Ont.

While the doctors will be paid as Colwood employees, they’ll be funded by provincial revenues billed by the clinic through the Ministry of Health in the same way doctors in other clinics bill for their time and office assistants.

Kobayashi says it’s an appealing offer for doctors, who will be part of a supportive team with a focus on well-being, rather than on the business of running a clinic.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 18, 2024.