New Fort St. John doctors to remove thousands from waiting list
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Thousands of people in Fort St. John will soon have access to a family doctor, thanks to two new physicians who are almost ready to open practices in the city.
Dr. Manraj Khangura and Dr. Haroon Ahmed are international medical graduates who completed their two-year residency training in the city. From September they will take 3,000 new patients.
“We are thrilled to have her join us,” said Dr. Hannah Galeazzi, vice chair of North Peace’s Division of Family Practice.
The province says it has been able to bring about 1,500 new family doctors into B.C.’s health-care system since 2017.
But in Fort St. John, most new doctors take over existing practices and do not accept new patients.
Galeazzi says the arrival of the two new doctors will ease pressure on the entire local health care system to reduce waiting lists.
She says many people without a family doctor use the emergency room for basic primary care.
“It’s really hard for patients when they don’t have a family doctor because there are a lot of things that aren’t emergencies, but they really don’t have anywhere else to go,” Galeazzi said.
“It will only be positive to have more physicians able to see patients on a regular basis… to screen them as appropriate for their age and manage their chronic disease.”
Northern Lights College opened a health laboratory at its Fort St. John campus this week. The six-bed training classroom serves as practice space for nursing and health care assistance students. As CBC’s Tom Summers reports, it’s part of a strategy to improve health-care programming in northeastern B.C.
BC boasts recruiting efforts
The provincial government says BC now has the most doctors per capita in the country.
On Wednesday, the Health Ministry said B.C. now has more than 15,000 physicians, with 271 doctors per 100,000 residents, more than half of whom are family doctors.
The ministry says more than 77 per cent of residents in the province now have a primary care provider, with 600,000 people connected to either a family doctor or nurse practitioner by 2023.
“We are making progress,” Premier David Abiy said. “Seventy percent is not 100 percent, and that’s the goal we’re aiming for.”
The ministry says more than 500 American health professionals have accepted jobs in the province as of last month, including 109 doctors, 315 nurses, 51 nurse practitioners and more than two dozen “allied health professionals.”
In Fort St. John, Galeazzi says the city’s residency program is helping recruit and retain doctors in the North.
She completed her residency in the city in 2022, and says familiarity helps new doctors transition into their practice.
“It’s nice to work where you trained,” he said. “You can just focus on the medicine and you don’t have to pay so much attention to logistics.”
The city’s residency program has two spots for Canadian graduates and two spots for international graduates.
Galeazzi says work is ongoing to establish community partnerships to help recruit and retain traveling locum doctors to fill service gaps.
Being able to offer incentives such as housing and transportation keeps the city competitive with other small, rural communities.
“Everyone is doing their best to provide services to the community,” he said.
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