TAYLOR, B.C.– The Taylor Medical Clinic may be shutting its doors soon.
The clinic is run by the District of Taylor itself and has, up until recently, been staffed with physicians from the North Peace Primary Care Clinic.
The North Peace Primary Care Clinic informed the District that it would not be renewing this agreement. The services will end on October 1st.
The district’s last effort to keep the clinic open is looking at whether a nurse practitioner—which is a nurse with specialized training that resembles that of a family physician—could take over the clinic.
“There really are no other doctors,” Taylor mayor Rob Fraser said. “We’ve tried every method that we possibly can. We’ve been through two groups of doctors… and the telehealth model.”
The clinic used a telehealth model in 2014, several years before it became a common tool in medicine with the advent of the pandemic.
While residents of Taylor with family doctors through the clinic will not lose their doctors entirely, they will lose access to them within their community. Visits to Fort St. John’s NPPCC are still possible but can be challenging for some patients.
“It becomes more difficult for seniors who have mobility problems or families who only have one vehicle,” Fraser said in a council meeting on Tuesday evening.
“So it becomes harder to arrange opportunities to go and sit with their doctor,” he said.
While this causes strain for members of the small community, the councillors recognized that the clinic’s impending closure is part of larger problems within the healthcare system.
