District of Clearwater looking into funding medical clinic to aid doctor recruitment

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Bluesky
• Share on X
• Copy Link

“But we’re not alone in this,” he added. “Merritt and 100 Mile House have also gone down. I get the alerts from Interior Health and multiple ERs have gone down over the last couple days, and I can probably pretty much guarantee Kamloops is struggling even at Royal Inland Hospital.”

Question of the Week

Do you spend less time outside when there is smoke in the air?

Jul 13, 2026

Looped In

LOOPED IN WITH NIKKI OMEN: July 13, 2026

Jul 13, 2026

1000 Ways to Heal

1000 WAYS TO HEAL: Connecting our heads and our hearts to change the planet

Jul 13, 2026

Recruitment is ongoing in Clearwater as four of five doctors are set to leave the Wells Gray Medical Clinic by this September. While one new doctor is set to arrive in Clearwater by late August, Blackwell said the district is currently looking into the possibility of its own medical clinic.

“Everybody has upped the game,” Blackwell added. “There are incentives, there are welcome wagons. This is not 2022. We’re playing a different game right now and we’re looking at possibly supporting a clinic or clinic operations to make it easier for doctors, especially if there isn’t a full team here.”

“Maybe overhead subsidies, rent subsidies and things along those lines so that the cost isn’t all borne by a small group of doctors and it sort of more mirrors what would happen with a larger group of doctors. This model is being used in Grand Forks with a lot of success right now.”

Blackwell said if the clinic idea goes ahead, the District of Clearwater plans to be as ‘hands off’ as possible.

“We would potentially like a third-party, non-profit to come in,” Blackwell said. “We would fund them and they distribute the money as they see fit or we could also essentially form some sort of a direct agreement.”

“They’ll do the paperwork, pay the bills, manage the staff and things like that. That’s something we would like to see as a model. We’ll see if some group develops like that or if we’ll have to form one ourselves.”

It’s unclear when this clinic will open its doors, as it still remains to be seen whether the District of Clearwater decides to move ahead with this plan.

“This is beyond fresh,” Blackwell conceded. “It’s basically not even hatched at this point.”

“We’ve had discussions in the background trying to decide who we would want on a dream team to try to bring this forward, but like all situations related to health care, it’s moving so fast that we may have to hit the ground running and just do it.”