With two Merritt doctors announcing this month that they will be closing their practices in 2016, patients are worried and administrators are bracing

“It’s scary. I don’t want anybody to walk in my shoes, because it’s scarier than hell,” said a distraught Cherylle Douglas who recently found out she needs to find a new physician.

In four months, Douglas, along with her father, daughter, grandson and brother, will all be left without a family doctor.

Thousands of other Merritt residents are in the same situation.

Within the past three weeks, two of Merritt’s seven doctors — who between them have nearly 40 years of experience serving the community — announced they will be closing their medical practices in the spring.

Doctor Urbanus Bester will close his office by April, and Dr. Andries Smit will follow suit a month later.

Douglas is one of many patients Dr. Smit serves, and she and her father each currently rely on him for the prescription medicine they need.

She has multiple sclerosis, and her father has prostate cancer.

“I’m concerned and I’m worried and I’m scared.” — Merrittonian Cherylle Douglas.

“It’s metastasized into the bones and into the liver and the kidneys, so he is on borrowed time,” Douglas said.

“What am I supposed to do for the pain killers that I need, and my father needs, because there’s no more doctor here for him?” she asked. “It bothers the hell out of me because my father is on morphine twice a day. His mobility is limited at the best of times, I’m his primary caregiver and now I’m not going to have a doctor to get his medication.”

Douglas said that without a family doctor in place, they will not be able to get their prescriptions filled.

She inquired into the availability of transferring to another local doctor, and was placed on a waiting list that was 14 pages long.

Her other brother, who resides in Kamloops, made some inquiring phone calls as to the availability of doctors in that city to no avail, she said.

She said she was informed by staff at Royal Inland Hospital that she could expect up to five hour long waits in the emergency room to get a doctor to fill out a prescription.

“I’m concerned and I’m worried and I’m scared,” she said.

A FAMILIAR STORY

The need for more physicians is not new in Merritt, but the announcement of back-to-back retirements is leaving an additional 3,000 people in a community of 8,000 left to search for another doctor.

Dr. Duncan Ross is the chief of staff at the Nicola Valley Hospital. He described the announcement that Dr. Smit was closing his office as a crisis on top of the semi-crisis caused by Dr. Bester’s announcement.

He said the town is short of family physicians, though the emergency room at the hospital is well staffed, thanks to locum physicians.

Ross said that the doctors in town will ramp up efforts to find at least one more full time doctor for the community.

Prescriptions can be renewed at the Nicola Valley Hospital but, Ross said that’s not ideal.

“We’re trying to avoid turning the [hospital] into a walk-in clinic,” Ross said.

In the short term, the other physicians will try to accommodate refills at their offices for those without their own doctor.

All the doctors in town have waiting lists, Ross said.

Last year, nurse practitioner Julie Walker started working out of the Conayt Friendship Society.

She is a first of her kind in Merritt, and is accepting some new patients in the wake of the recent retirement announcements.

“We’ve had a number of patients call from both offices requesting to transfer over here,” she said.

Walker can diagnose patients, order medications, perform diagnostic testing and refer people to specialists.

“I know there’s a lot of very anxious people out there, and I understand. [But] the reality is that we have seen this in other communities and we have gotten past these crises.” —Dr. Malcolm Ogborn, IHA

“As a nurse practitioner, I can be somebody’s primary care provider just like a family physician would be,” she said.

Dr. Malcolm Ogborn, IHA executive medical director for this region said the pressure is on to recruit new doctors to Merritt, and there will probably be an increased effort to at least replace the two outgoing physicians.

“It looks bad when it hits one community all at once,” Ogborn said of the doctor retirements in Merritt.

Ogborn said he thinks the three main difficulties faced when trying to recruit doctors is the business and practise structure in B.C., spousal employment and educational opportunities for their children.

What he hopes will reel them in are financial incentives. He cited bonuses, allowances for moving and educational purposes, and higher billing to lure doctors to rural communities.

“For Merritt, I know there’s a lot of very anxious people out there, and I understand. [But] the reality is that we have seen this in other communities and we have gotten past these crises,” Ogborn said.

WHAT TO DO

There are a number of initiatives that are in the works to deal with the current doctor shortage in Merritt.

Dr. Duncan Ross said Dr. Errol Van Der Merwe will be tasked with contacting the incoming doctor to Logan Lake, who was recruited via the provincial government’s Practice Ready Assessment Program (PRA). This pilot project recruits doctors who have already completed residencies in family medicine outside of Canada by having a B.C. doctor evaluate their skills over a period of time.

Graduates of the program agree to work three years in a community in need of a physician.

Ross said Van Der Merwe will support the new Logan Lake doctor and introduce him or her to the local medical scene.

Ross will begin calling medical schools in Vancouver and Kelowna to try and find graduates willing to start working in Merritt.

Merritt doctors won’t be encouraging their Logan Lake-based patients to switch over to the incoming doctor, but that will be an option, Ross confirmed.

Doing so would make space for doctor-less Merrittonians.

Ross said Merritt would likely take advantage of the PRA program.

“The local populous here might [ask], ‘Why wasn’t that going on before?’ Well, it wasn’t going on before because we had recruited a new doctor here,” Ross said.

Meanwhile Ross will begin calling medical schools in Vancouver and Kelowna to try and find graduates willing to start working in Merritt.

He said doctors will also participate in resident training, welcoming trainees from Kelowna who will get to know the town and local medical scene better.

“We’ve had one here already and a medical student as well,” Ross said.

In a phone interview, Fraser-Nicola MLA Jackie Tegart said that she is aware of the retirements, and is willing to help, but the community will need to take the initiative in seeking her aid.

“If there’s anything through my office that I can do, I’m more than willing to facilitate those meetings or to support the city in whatever actions they want to take,” Tegart said.

“I wouldn’t presume as the MLA to take action without the local leadership and myself having a meeting,” she said.

Minister of Health Terry Lake did not respond to the Herald’s request for an interview before press time.

IS IT WORKING?

While the health authority does have recruitment responsibilities, it hasn’t been much help in bringing in new doctors to Merritt.

“They don’t really find new people,” Ross said, noting their ability to recruit seems limited.

Ross said that much of the recruitment efforts in Merritt have been doctors seeking doctors.

“As far as [Interior Health] producing candidates for us? It doesn’t happen.” —Dr. Duncan Ross, chief of staff at the Nicola Valley Hospital

“We classify how much effort we put into advertising for physicians in individual communities, because it costs a lot of money — Merritt’s been at the top of that list for some time now,” said IHA’s Dr. Ogborn.

“We’re responsible for supporting recruitment, so we help with the advertising and we help with placements, [but doctors] don’t actually work for us and we don’t control the conditions they’re coming to.”

Back in December of 2013, when Merritt was served by six physicians, the IHA said it was a goal of theirs to recruit three more doctors to the Nicola Valley.

One doctors has since started a practise here — Dr. Drew Soderberg — but Dr. Ross said it was he who brought Dr. Soderberg to town.

When asked how many physicians the IHA has recruited to Merritt, Ogborn said they hadn’t recruited anyone recently.

“We basically do our own recruiting,” Ross said.

“As far as [Interior Health] producing candidates for us? It doesn’t happen.”

Ross said he recruited all the locum physicians working out of the Nicola Valley Hospital himself.

“Everyone wants a health authority to solve this. We want to solve it too, [but] I’m not entirely sure we’re the sharpest tool for this particular job.” —Dr. Malcolm Ogborn, IHA

“It’s a matter of cold calling people sometimes and just showing them some hospitality. That’s what got all these guys into [the emergency room] — unfortunately, it hasn’t yet translated into family doctors,” Ross said of locum physicians working in the ER.

Ogborn said he believes the local medical community, the municipality and community at large working together to find a way to market the town is one of the best ways to attract doctors.

“Everyone wants a health authority to solve this,” he said. “We want to solve it too, [but] I’m not entirely sure we’re the sharpest tool for this particular job.”