As of Christmas, there will be no working doctors in the Logan Lake community.

The two physicians that currently practice there are moving on as of December 24th and Interior Health is working to fill the void. Mayor Robin Smith says it’s not a new situation. “Definitely been through this in the past and it’s definitely not the best place for us to be. There is always the goal to never have a gap in service, but it looks like it’s going to be the case up here at least in the short term until they can get another physician in place. So, it’s always concerning.”

Interior Health’s Executive Director Clinical Operations Rural Acute & Community Lisa Zetes-Zinatta says the hope is to have a new doctor working in Logan Lake within a few months. “We expect hopefully that they’ll be in by the spring. So the stop gap measure is to have a nurse practitioner in there and then moving forward we’ll have both a physician and nurse practitioner in place.”

Zetes-Zinatta adds that this problem is not unique to Interior Health. “While we’re seeing it here in our region, across BC we are finding difficulty in bringing in enough family practitioners. So it’s a systemic problem, but of course in areas where you only have two or three physicians it becomes more of an acute issue.”