Merritt is expected to have another new doctor come July.
Temporary Interior Health Authority director of acute care Mike Purdon told the Herald this new doctor will be graduating from a program this coming spring and is expected to take a permanent job in Merritt.
However, for the time being, the announcement remains unofficial.
Bernie Easson, community integration health services administrator for the IHA, said there is a process that needs to occur first and documents that need to be signed before a new doctor is guaranteed to be coming to Merritt.
She said IHA hopes to have more doctors in Merritt by next summer, and are currently in the process of recruitment.
Purdon said recruiting doctors to rural communities is a challenge, noting there are 339 job openings in B.C. for family physicians and 79 across the IHA alone.
“It’s a very competitive marketplace, and despite our best efforts, these things take time,” Purdon said.
Ultimately, it is up to the doctor to decide where she or he wants to set up a practice.
Although he couldn’t release too many details about this particular doctor, Purdon said he or she is a family physician.
There are seven permanent doctors who serve Merritt at the moment — doctors Urbanus Bester, Donald McLeod, Duncan Ross, Paul Simon, Andries Smit, Drew Soderberg and Errol Van Der Merwe.
Last December, IHA board of directors chair Norman Embree and CEO Dr. Robert Halpenny visited Merritt as part of their annual meetings throughout the Interior.
Although the IHA had planned to recruit three more doctors to serve Merritt, at the time of that meeting they hadn’t had any applicants.
Since then, the IHA has recruited Dr. Soderberg.
This new doctor, expected to start working here in the summer of 2015, would make two new recruits and bring the total number of doctors in Merritt to eight.
Purdon said the IHA would like to have about eight doctors serving Merritt.
Purdon also said the IHA has had help from physicians in Kelowna to fill in for local doctors intermittently since this past summer.
Purdon has even made the trip to Merritt to support the community.
“The doctors in Merritt work phenomenally hard. There’s a great core group, and to make sure that they can get away for a little time off is really important to us,” Purdon said.
He said at least one of these Kelowna doctors has been able to visit Logan Lake to serve that community from time to time.
March will mark one year that Logan Lake has gone without a permanent doctor.
