Prince George is currently short nearly a dozen family doctors, Northern Health vice president of medicine Dr. David Butcher confirmed Thursday.
He said there are the full-time equivalent of 69 family doctors in the city, 11.5 below the ideal of 80.5. There are actually 92 such physicians in the city but not all are full-time and not all are members of Northern Health's medical staff.
Butcher said it's a smaller gap than the city has faced previously, although still significant. Locums, or doctors providing coverage on a short-term basis, are picking up the slack.
"The shortcoming is the locums don't take on long-term relationships with patients," Butcher said. "They may provide medical care for a short period but not become somebody's family doctor."
Butcher added that Northern Health is working with local family physicians to get a better gauge of what the community's needs may be.
"What we calculate are the numbers needed to serve the hospital and the Northern Health programs and we then make the assumption that that's the number needed to meet all the community primary care needs," Butcher said.
"And in a small community, where there are only four or five physicians, that's a fair assumption. In a community like Prince George, there are a lot more community primary care needs that go unmet than are necessarily included in our calculations.
"So, we're working with the division of family practice to determine a different way of calculating the numbers needed and we think that will then give us a much more accurate view of what the actual gap is in terms of the number of family physicians needed.
"And that will then direct our recruitment practices from here in."
Butcher said the review should be completed by spring and will likely show Prince George will need additional doctors.
Butcher's comments came a day after an update was provided to Northern Health's board of directors that showed 64 vacancies across the northern B.C. region with 35 of them in family practice as of Sept. 19.
A more local breakdown was not available, but Northern Health chief executive officer Cathy Ulrich said a majority of the vacancies are outside Prince George.
The report did provide a breakdown of confirmed arrivals for the year so far and it showed two family practitioners arriving in Prince George in September and one more in December.
It also said one psychiatrist arrived in September and three are coming in November.
Board chair Charles Jago made note of the Northern Medical Program's impact on bringing more doctors to Prince George.
"The fact of the matter is, with the physician vacancies in Prince George, that situation has improved tremendously since the advent of the Northern Medical Program," he said.
"It's been easier to attract physicians, especially specialists who can teach and train and do their practice and have full careers and do research in some cases."
There are still some areas that remain a challenge, he added, "but generally, the situation is much, much better than it was."
