The City of Langford will spend $1.7 million to support a new medical clinic with 10 new doctors in its downtown area.
When it opens early next year, the 4,400-square-foot clinic at the Westshore Masonic Centre on Bryn Maur Road, just off Goldstream Avenue, is expected to serve 12,500 patients.
Five physicians — all from the United Kingdom — have already signed contracts to provide primary care in the space.
The other five are expected to be signed by the time the clinic opens, said Dr. Spencer Cleave, chair of the South Island Primary Care Society.
The project is a partnership that includes Langford, the South Island Primary Care Society and the Freemasons of Langford, who are leasing their ground-floor commercial space for the clinic. The Masons opened their new building and community space on the second floor in November.
The city said it will fund tenant improvements in the space, and pay for medical equipment, furniture and fixtures for the new clinic. It’s also offering temporary accommodations for incoming doctors, potential tax exemptions and marketing support for doctor recruitment.
Additional funding is coming from the Westshore Charity Golf Tournament, operated for years by former long-time mayor Stew Young, and private donors.
Langford Mayor Scott Goodmanson said the new clinic will help to alleviate an acute doctor shortage on the West Shore, where about a quarter of residents don’t have a family doctor.
With a population that’s surging past 58,000, Langford is considered the fastest-growing community in British Columbia.
“People have been waiting far too long for a doctor, the systems are at a breaking point and something meaningful and immediate must be done,” Goodmanson told a news conference on Monday.
He said the city is grateful for the leadership and dedication of the South Island Primary Care Society and the Freemasons of Langford, who are leasing the space at cost.
Councillors unanimously committed to funding the costs of tenant improvements for the clinic at an in-camera council meeting on June 10.
Monday’s announcement builds on the lease the city extended to the South Island Primary Care Society in 2024 for $1 to immediately accommodate three doctors at 877 Goldstream Ave.
The non-profit society has already recruited 12 physicians to the community over the past 18 months. Cleave, who founded the society in 2020, said the non-profit is taking “an all-hands on deck approach” amid the primary-care crisis.
Historically, he said, public access to primary health care has depended on owner-operator physicians, but now the society can take on recruitment and provide doctors with space and take over some of the day-to-day issues of running a business.
“What’s attractive, I think, is the stability our organization provides and the promise that we take care of the non-clinical aspects of a clinic,” he said. “There’s not an expectation that the physicians run a business or worry about budgets. They show up, they do their work. If there’s an issue, if there’s something they want, they can count on a nimble and flexible organization to help them.”
The doctors are still charged overhead because the society can’t “unlawfully enrich a physician,” he said.
“They have to roughly contribute what they would anywhere else,” said Cleave. “But we remove the administrative aspect. They don’t have to think about it. They pay a flat rate for overhead and they come and do their work and that’s it.”
The number of West Shore residents without a family doctor is estimated to be about 27,000, but Cleave believes the real number is higher, because a lot of people have not registered with the Health Ministry to indicate they do not have a doctor.
He said recent contributions through the charity golf tournament and other private donations will pay for any extras the society might need, including physician recruitment and retention.
“They are coming from a foreign country, getting used to the system, so we have to make sure there are folks paid and hired to work with them to make sure everything is running smoothly.”
Eligible patients on the West Shore waiting for a doctor through the B.C. Health Connect Registry will be contacted once the new clinic is up and running.
Langford Coun. Colby Harder said finding a family doctor is the No. 1 issue named in all of the city’s surveys, even though health care is a provincial responsibility.
“People new to Langford, people who have lived here a long time and have seen their doctor retire … they turn to the city,” said Harder. “Residents want action.”
Alyssa Andres, executive director of the South Island Primary Care Society, said the new clinic, which will also have eight assistants, a clinic manager and other staff, has attracted strong interest from doctors — she called recruitment the “easiest part of our work so far.”
“I like to say we’re at a physician surplus and we could benefit from more and more spaces in our community. A staffing surplus isn’t something you typically hear about in health care, but so far with the model we’ve created, we’ve had an easy time recruiting doctors.”
She said the new doctors range from experienced practising physicians to new doctors coming out of residency.
Langford’s new clinic is similar to the one Colwood announced last year, when it started the first municipally operated medical clinic in Canada.
The new building for Langford’s clinic followed a land deal with the Masons.
Masons spokesman David Cronkhite said the city wanted to acquire the one-acre property on Goldstream Avenue for park space, and offered the club the Bryn Maur property for its new community centre.
The city will be the primary tenant, subleasing the ground floor of the clinic, said Cronkhite.
