'Just isn't sustainable': More family doctors leave practice in Greater Victoria

With thousands of patients struggling to find a family doctor on the South Island, physicians who have or are planning to leave say it doesn't make their decision easy.

A Victoria family, with two parents working as physicians, struggles to find regular, reliable childcare for their three kids, and the pandemic made it even more difficult.

"I could probably talk to you for an hour about that," said Dr. Sarah Lea, of Victoria.

Lea transitioned out of her family practice earlier in the new year, not to leave medicine entirely, but to refine her workload in a career with greater flexibility and what she calls a better pay model.

"It's the cost of running the business in family medicine that just isn't sustainable," she said.

"You only get paid when you're seeing a patient under fee for service medicine – so any notes, any labs, all has to be done after hours."

The choice to leave for her, and others, comes with guilt for the many patients they leave behind.

"Feels like you're abandoning people," said Lea.

PATIENT ANXIETY

Another doctor from the Grow Health clinic in View Royal, B.C., has just told patients she's made the "incredibly difficult" decision to leave her practice at the end of June to move closer to family in Ontario.

She's the latest physician to leave the South Island, where multiple clinics have announced closures in recent months, and where an estimated 100,000 people can't find a family doctor.

"I don't know how that isn't a crisis," said Camille Currie with BC Health Care Matters.

"We need to hear from the government. We need to hear what they're going to do to help us," she said.

Currie added that many are feeling fear and anxiety about losing their family doctor, if they have one at all.

"So all of a sudden they're being told they have no doctor, then they're hearing about walk-in clinics closing and they're not seeing anything in the media – they're not seeing anything on government websites providing them with guidance on what to do next," she said. "So they're scared."

The province has faced a lot of criticism for not doing more. In a statement Tuesday, the province said it remains committed to addressing long-standing issues in the community with the help of doctors.