B.C. family doctor plan attracting attention in Alberta

Alexander Kilpatrick says his future as a family physician in Greater Victoria just got a lot brighter.

"Realistically, before a couple days ago [I] was looking at other provinces and their payment models, as well as places such as the United States," he says from the home he’s renting with his wife and three young children.

The recent medical school grad had already committed to work in Langford for two years but he was considering moving his family elsewhere due to high real estate prices.

Kilpatrick called Monday’s announcement about a new payment option for family doctors in B.C. a good first step.

"A model like this starts looking a lot better than what my prospects were a couple days ago," he said.

Doctors of BC, which negotiated the new payment model with the province, says that a full-service family doctor currently earning $250,000 a year could make up to $385,000 annually under the new model.

It’s a major raise that covers tasks like paper work – which was previously not compensated for – and it’s expected to keep doctors from leaving family practice and lure new grads into it.

"Many people trained as family doctors were not choosing it because, in the words of the president of the Doctors of BC, it was broken,” said B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix on Tuesday.

Kilpatrick says the changes to compensation will likely attract medical students to become family doctors.

"I think that they will give more thought to family practice than they would have before," he said.

The new deal is also causing ripple effects in Alberta, where family doctors two years ago were paid as much as $310,000 before overhead and taxes.

Alberta NDP leader Rachel Notley warned that the government there needs to keep pace with B.C. or lose its family doctors to B.C.

"I truly fear that Alberta doctors will look to B.C. as a place where the government has issued a very clear intent to build respect and end chaos in health care," she said Tuesday.

The new model comes into effect in February.

Its goal is to not only keep and attract more family doctors in B.C., but also to match those family doctors with the one million British Columbians currently without one.