A few short years ago, Whistler’s primary health-care system was in crisis.
In 2019, a staggering 40 per cent of the community didn’t have access to a family doctor. Those that did often had long waits to get help. For various reasons, a few long-standing family practices closed their doors; doctors left or retired, and no one was stepping in to fill the void. The numbers paint the clearest picture: a community the size of Whistler should have, at minimum, 16 full-time family physicians and/or nurse practitioners—at this particular point in time, there were just six.
In this vacuum, the burden of care fell to Whistler’s busy emergency department, straining that facility and adding tremendous cost pressures to an already overtaxed system.
Something had to be done. And so, after more than two years of research, discussion and planning, in 2022, the Whistler 360 Health Collaborative was born, a non-profit society with charitable status, governed by a community board supported by volunteers. In January, Whistler 360 took over the Whistler Medical Clinic, the longest-standing family medicine practice in Whistler.
In the last six months, under the Whistler 360 banner, two renovated spaces (five exam rooms in total) and two new doctors have begun taking on new patients, with another doctor set to arrive from the U.K. in the fall. A new nurse practitioner begins work this month, with another slated to start in the coming months. Two-thousand new patients, and counting, have registered to get access to Whistler 360 primary care and all are being welcomed to sign up. (Visit whistler360health.org/how-to-get-involved to register for primary care.)
Simply put, Whistler is changing the way it delivers health-care in this small rural community. And people are starting to take note.
But none of it would have been possible without the community answering the call for help and trailblazing new pathways out of an old and tired system unable to pivot to face today’s challenges. This is the story about the local people who helped make it all happen. And continue to do so.
If there’s any doubt the state of health-care in Whistler has transformed in the last six months, just talk to Sean Bondaroff, co-owner and art director of Whistler’s iconic Toad Hall Studios. Bondaroff was one of the 40 per cent in Whistler without a doctor. It’s not as though he has never had one. In fact, he was a patient of Dr. Rob Burgess, founder of the Whistler Medical Clinic and family physician in Whistler for 43 years. Burgess’ death in September 2021 had reverberations throughout the community.
But the tricky thing about doctors is, you often don’t need them… until you need them. By the time Bondaroff needed to see a doctor, he had missed the transfer window for Burgess’ patients. The doctors at the Whistler Medical Clinic were at maximum capacity and unable to take new patients. And there was nowhere else to go.
Then this year, Bondaroff, along with his wife, signed up for Whistler 360’s new patient registry. They, along with 650 new patients, have recently seen their doctor at the new satellite location on Main Street.
“Thank God,” says Bondaroff. “What a relief.
“I’m super happy about it, that’s for sure … I’m just so happy to see someone more permanent come to town.”
The Vision
If you talk to Dr. Karin Kausky, one of those at the helm of transforming health-care delivery, you get a sense this is only the beginning, that there are great things on the horizon for health-care in Whistler. To now work within a system where there is increasing access to family doctors, a system where the goal is to actively try to capture people who are underserved, like those without insurance coverage or those struggling with mental health issues, is a game-changer for her.
“That actually brings the joy back to work,” says Kausky, who has been a family doctor at the Whistler Medical Clinic for the past 30 years.
Under the Whistler 360 model, family physicians can focus on the health of the patients first and foremost; the day-to-day operations of the business now fall to the administrative arm of the non-profit.
“This is a massive cultural shift in moving from this privately owned small business that’s just barely surviving to this non-profit society that is community-led and governed, that is accountable to the community,” she says.
“Now we can focus on the community’s health.”
Kausky is a trailblazer in her own right, even before sitting on the Whistler 360 board as vice chair and shepherding it through the last four years. She was the Chief Medical Officer for the women’s alpine events at the 2010 Olympics in Whistler, the 2022 Family Physician of the Year, and Whistler’s Citizen of the Year in 2021. She has been critical to the success of Whistler 360.
“There’s an inspiring amount of energy, expertise and passion in the community for this,” she says. “It really is a passionate group of people that understands the community and wants to promote wellness.
“It’s been so inspiring to me … that it’s personal to them.”
Thousands of volunteer hours have gone on behind the scenes to date, the unsung heroes who put in the time at brainstorming meetings, who have researched and studied other models around the province to see what would work best in Whistler, who have stayed the course even in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges.
They knew that funding was critical to get Whistler 360 off the ground in this early stage. There is no way, for example, that the non-profit could have taken over the Whistler Medical Clinic, and all that entails, as well as take on two new spaces that needed renovations, as well as recruit new family physicians and nurse practitioners, without funding.
And the community answered that call.
The Founders
Kevin and Karen Morgan are part-time Whistler residents, visiting over the last 25 years and ultimately buying a home in the Upper Village 12 years ago. They are now in the process of moving here full-time from Ontario.
There, in recent years, the couple have been critical to the creation of the Oak Ridges Hospice in Durham Region, just east of Toronto. A few years ago, there were no hospice beds in that region, which served roughly 800,000 people. Kevin Morgan and Dave Sidhu formed The Morgan & Sidhu Family Hospice Ltd., jointly pledging $2 million as a foundational gift. Now, the Oak Ridges Hospice is a 10-bed facility.
And so, supporting Whistler 360 was a natural fit for the Morgans, a way to make a difference in their new full-time community.
“When planning our move to the Sea to Sky, we looked at ways we could have an impact in our community and Whistler 360 was an easy and obvious cause to support,” wrote Kevin Morgan in an email to the Whistler Blackcomb Foundation. “The need for family health-care teams and networks is so desperate throughout the Sea to Sky, but also throughout the whole country.
“We are happy to be founding donors at Whistler 360 and are ecstatic about the progress they have made in such a short period of time.
“Karen and I couldn’t be more thrilled to be a small part of bringing sustainable health-care to Whistler.”
Closer to home, after Burgess’ passing, a fund was set up in his name by the Whistler Health Care Foundation, and this too has made its mark on Whistler 360. The Dr. Rob Burgess Primary Care Fund has provided $205,000 to Whistler 360 so far, something “he would have been totally blown away by,” says daughter Micky Burgess.
“Primary care was so important to him. He watched the whole community grow in front of his eyes.”
Burgess was a family doctor in Whistler for 43 years, starting in ski patrol in the late ’70s before setting up a medical trailer to deal with everything from ear infections to skiers’ broken bones. That trailer eventually transformed into the Whistler Medical Clinic, with Burgess at the helm along the way.
The Whistler Blackcomb Foundation also contributed $500,000 to the cause.
The Space
Just as it took a trailblazer like Burgess to find space for a medical clinic decades ago, the same is true today.
Space, and high rents, continue to pose problems in Whistler whether you’re a ski bum looking for a shared bedroom or a business looking to set up shop.
Health-care is not immune to these challenges.
How then would a start-up non-profit foot the monthly bill of a commercial rental in a central village location?
“There’s no way we would be able to afford any space in the village and pay market rents,” says Carol Leacy, chair of Whistler 360.
So, once again it was the community that provided the answer and support. Longtime Whistler business owners Terri Ohyama and Norbert Doebelin now own the space that once housed Town Plaza Medical Clinic, which closed in May 2022 after 25 years. Without any fanfare, the new landlords quietly offered the empty space to Whistler 360. If the non-profit could cover the strata fees, insurance and property taxes, they would waive rent for five years, with an option to renew.
“It was exceptionally generous,” says Leacy of the space, which added three new exam rooms under Whistler 360.
“The Whistler 360 organization did a very good job,” says Ohyama in an emailed statement. “If this was the government, [the work] Whistler 360 [has accomplished] would take many more months with many more employees. Compared to them, what we did was so little. We just wanted to bring more doctors to serve Whistlerites for proper care.”
It’s the same reason Rick Perolli, owner of Precision Painting, donated time and resources to paint the satellite medical practice on Main Street, as well as the expanded space at the main clinic housed on the second floor of the Whistler Health Care Centre.
“There are so many people who don’t have doctors. It’s that simple,” says Perolli.
He estimates his donation was in the range of $3,000—money well spent, in his view.
Perolli asked Jeremy Robb of Bluebird Fine Finishing to refinish the doors in the clinic free of charge. For Robb, it was a little more personal. With no family doctor after Town Plaza Medical Clinic closed its doors, Robb knew first-hand just how important it was to get this space off the ground as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
“As someone who no longer had a family doctor, I totally understood the importance to the community; it was nice to do my part,” he says.
His donation was in the range of $1,400. He has since added his name to the new patient registry.
Sheldon Gaudet of Manor Building Projects managed the small renovation at just over cost. Like Perolli, he knows people involved with Whistler 360 Health personally.
“It was important to them, so it was important to me,” says Gaudet.
Other donations and forms of support continue to flow in, each making a difference to the work behind the scenes of making Whistler 360 a success.
The Future and The Fundraisers
Still, the work continues, with more and more community members finding ways to help.
In May, the 100 Women of Whistler Who Care had its quarterly meeting. Each member donates $100 at every meeting and, collectively, the group decides which non-profit the money will be funnelled into every three months. Three local charities presented projects in May in the hopes of securing funding from the group, including Whistler 360, which was looking for funds to go towards a patient self-registration kiosk at its clinic.
Whistler 360 was ultimately successful in securing the donation: $11,300 from 113 women.
“It’s opening up doors for more Whistler residents to get in to see a family doctor,” says 100 Women of Whistler Who Care founder Ashlie Girvan.
The project has universal appeal; everybody should have access to a family doctor.
Girvan is another local trailblazer who started 100 Women in 2019. In that time, the group has donated $202,400 to local organizations.
Another sizable donation is set to come in after the Whistler Health Care Foundation’s annual Hike for Health on Sunday, June 18.
In the meantime, the hard work continues.
Whistler Councillor Jen Ford, who sits on the board of Whistler 360, says people are paying attention to what’s happening in the community as they look for solutions to the primary care staff shortage. While Whistler 360 hasn’t rewritten any rules, she says, what it has done is travel to, and looked at, successful health-care models across other communities in B.C. to discover a solution that would best serve Whistler patients.
“It’s not that simple,” says Ford of the reimagining of the delivery of primary care in a community, adding that Whistler 360 is not a boilerplate for other communities. “It has to be community-led. It has to be locally focused.”
Of the success to date, she adds: “I think it was equal parts luck, equal parts really motivated and inspiring leadership from Karin (Kausky) and Carol (Leacy).”
Invigorated by the work to date, Kausky says the crux of this success ultimately lies with the concept of a “community-led and governed” organization. That, she says, creates a shared accountability for the wellness of the entire community, a concept that was highlighted best in Whistler’s response to the pandemic.
“COVID really showed us that health-care is this team sport,” says Kausky.
Adds Leacy: “I was hoping the community would be really supportive of this … but I’ve just been shocked at how positive everyone has been. It’s really quite overwhelming.”
Be A Trailblazer
You can be a trailblazer, too.
Whistler 360 Health is becoming a collective community endeavour with so many people now having a hand in the future of Whistler’s collective well-being.
On Sunday, June 18, Father’s Day, Whistler is hosting the second annual Hike for Health, with all proceeds going to the Dr. Rob Burgess Primary Care Fund. The fun and family-friendly event takes place on the Ascent Trails on Blackcomb Mountain. In its inaugural year, Hike for Health raised $80,000. Like the Whistler trailblazers in this story—Dr. Karin Kausky, philanthropist Kevin Morgan, Dr. Rob Burgess, and others—you too can be a “Trailblazer” for health by donating $500, $1,000, $5,000 or $10,000 to the Hike for Health. The event will max out at 300 participants, so register in advance.
Hike for Health tickets are $40 per adult, $25 for youth aged seven to 18, and free for kids under six.
Visit whistlerhealthcarefoundation.org/hike-for-health to register, or for more information about sponsoring the fundraiser.
