Primary Healthcare Access

Healthcare delivery is a provincial responsibility, but land use, zoning, parking, and political pressure sit with the municipality. Council has more leverage on this file than it has used. The commitments below are the ones a city council can credibly keep in a four-year term.

Commitments

Study a municipal primary care clinic on the Colwood Clinic model. Colwood's clinic operates with salaried physicians delivering care to patients without a family doctor. Other Canadian cities have moved into primary care delivery when the Province has been slow to act, and Colwood is the closest working example on Vancouver Island. The clinic model is not the only option worth studying. The year of serious work should also examine contracting through a non-profit operator, partnering with the Nanaimo Division of Family Practice, and expanding nurse practitioner capacity. At the end of a year, council either has a project to fund or a documented case for why the model does not fit Nanaimo. Either way, the roughly 20,000 residents currently without a family doctor get a clearer answer than they have today.

Advocate for the Patient Tower and the cardiac catheterization lab at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital. The regional hospital is the central healthcare facility for the roughly 400,000 people between Victoria and Campbell River. The Province has been promising the Patient Tower expansion for years. Two hundred and forty local doctors signed a public petition asking for it. The cath lab is the closest to a deliverable in the near term. Patients currently travel to Victoria or Vancouver for procedures that should be available locally. Council should be the loudest voice in the room beside the doctors, not a body that occasionally writes a letter when asked.

Lobby for a Mental Health and Addictions Emergency Room, modelled on the existing Seniors' Emergency Room. The Seniors' Emergency Room at the regional hospital has worked. A specialized intake for the mental health and addictions crises that currently move through the main emergency room is the next logical step. Other Canadian hospitals have built these. The capital case and the operational case can both be made, and the next council should make them.

Use provincial transit-oriented designation rules to build a medical neighbourhood around Nanaimo Regional General Hospital. The Hospital and University area is designated a Transit-Oriented Area, which means provincial law requires the City to allow higher density and to remove residential parking minimums within four hundred metres of the bus exchange. That tool was designed for housing. It works equally well for medical clinics, professional offices, and staff housing. Doctors want to live near where they work. Specialists want to practise near where they admit. The next council should direct staff to amend the local zoning to allow medical and professional uses within the Hospital transit-oriented area alongside the residential density the provincial rule requires, and to fast-track applications for the kinds of buildings that will house the workforce the regional hospital needs.

Collaborate with the Nanaimo District Hospital Foundation and the Nanaimo Division of Family Practice. The Foundation raises capital for the equipment the regional hospital needs faster than the Province funds it. The Division organizes the local family doctors, understands where the gaps are, and is the most credible partner on any recruitment or retention program the City runs. Council's role is to be a regular partner to both bodies, not a party that shows up when something needs cutting.

Support nurse practitioner clinics such as Nexus. Nurse practitioners are qualified to deliver most of the primary care Nanaimo's unattached patients need, and Nexus is already delivering that care to residents without a family doctor. Council's role is to remove municipal barriers where they exist, to make suitable space available, and to advocate provincially for the funding structure these clinics rely on.

Beyond the six commitments

Workforce recruitment. Council can partner with community stakeholders to make short-term housing available for new healthcare professionals arriving in Nanaimo. Recruitment is one of the concrete files where municipal contribution moves the needle, and the workforce is what makes every other commitment on this page deliverable.

Private clinics. Physicians should have the option to practise as they choose, and private clinics will likely remain a significant part of the mix in Nanaimo. Publicly salaried positions are appealing to a meaningful segment of both experienced and new-graduate physicians. Making those positions available in Nanaimo is one way of putting the city on the map as a place worth relocating to.

Specific council motions

Three to five specific council motions on the healthcare file are being finalized and will be added to this section once confirmed.