Whistler’s Creekside Health is making large strides in efforts to entice family physicians to the community, with four new medical doctors recruited in a little under a year, and another two to come on board later in 2024.
“It really was a combination of a lot of hard work, a lot of emails and phone calls and negotiations,” said Dr. Danielle Lewis, who is Creekside Health’s medical director and co-owner.
Creekside Health is billed as a multi-disciplinary clinic, with a raft of health practitioners working together under one roof, including a dietician and a clinical counsellor.
Lewis said that was a big draw for family physicians they were looking to bring on board.
“A big thing was having physicians come up and see the clinic, and a lot of our physicians are really wanting to be part of something like our clinic because it is quite unique in the way we have so many integrative health and allied health practitioners working together under one roof … so many family doctors feel quite isolated when they’re working in a family physician’s office,” Lewis said.
“Having a dietician you can refer to, having a psychiatrist that sees some of our mental health or challenging patients … that is such a wonderful environment to be working under, and I think as a family doctor, a lot of the doctors who came and saw what we were doing really wanted to be a part of it because it is quite innovative, and it helps the patients.”
The clinic, which opened in 2021, saw a lot of growth in 2023. In March, it was joined by Dr. Paulina Gasiorowska, followed by Dr. Sarah Pankratz in May 2023 and Dr. Melanie Levesque in December.
Dr. Stephanie Warwick will join the clinic in February 2024, while Lewis said two more doctors will join later in the year.
“This seems incredible considering Whistler had a shortage of family doctors not that long ago,” said Lewis.
She added the clinic has struggled against the same main issue so many others have in Whistler—housing—but through connections and building relationships, managed to secure some accommodation.
“One of our biggest challenges was accommodation. We were very fortunate to work with Whistler Sport Legacies and get our name on the list for subsidized accommodation, and we’ve been on the waitlist there for about two years,” she said.
“We got a two-bedroom, one-bathroom condo in Cheakamus… that really opened up some doors for us because we were able to advertise that we had some accommodation, and that just really started things off for us.”
Getting the housing win was very welcome, considering the clinic hired and lost a physician earlier in the year when housing did not work out—a common story with Whistler-based businesses seeking to hire professional workers.
“We had recruited a wonderful physician from Australia who unfortunately just couldn’t make accommodation work,” said Lewis.
For those doctors Creekside Health managed to lock in along with adequate housing, four are from Canada, with the other two coming from Australia and the U.K.
Dr. Gasiorowska commutes to Whistler from Britannia Beach, swapping a career as an emergency-room physician in the Lower Mainland for family practice.
Dr. Pankratz commutes to Whistler from Pemberton, again swapping the Lower Mainland for Creekside Health, while Dr. Leveseque moved to Whistler from North Vancouver.
The fourth Canadian-trained doctor will come on board in September, as she is currently completing her training at the University of British Columbia, and will spend two years working in Whistler as a “return of service” practitioner. Return of service is a program offered by the Ministry of Health, wherein young doctors have a portion of their training funded by the province, and in return are locked in to practice in a B.C. community.
Creekside Health’s success story comes on the heels of another banner year for the Whistler 360 Health Collaborative, which in 2023 opened new exam spaces for patients and connected hundreds of Whistlerites to a new family doctor under its innovative, collaborative model of health-care delivery.
With the new medical doctors on board, Lewis said Creekside Health is excited to let the community know they are also accepting new patients. Dr. Levesque has spaces open, while Dr. Warwick will be accepting patients next month.
Find more information at creeksidehealth.ca.
