The City of Kamloops is going to be asked to get into the medical recruitment business.

Councillor Kelly Hall has put forward a notice-of-motion to have City staff to launch a plan to work through the logistics of what would be needed to recruit a series of doctors on its own.

Hall says he’s launching the idea to see if Kamloops will be able to alleviate the inability of people in the city to find a personal physician.

“I think we have approximately 40,000 people without doctors,” noted Hall in conversation with Radio NL.  “It tells me that obviously the strategy for recruitment… and there are some good recruitment strategies that are being employed here in Kamloops… but they’re simply not working.”

Hall says he’s basing his strategy on one which has been implemented in Colwood, a suburb of Victoria.

“In conversations with the mayor of Colwood, they have a five-year business plan. Their five-year business plan was to hire eight doctors in five years. They’ve already hired two,” said Hall.  “They had 113 applications to come to the City of Colwood to work. Before they had this project off the ground, they had no doctors.”

Hall says the concept itself has the blessing of the provincial Health Ministry.

“The provincial government made it available when they changed their payment program to doctors to a longitudinal family payment model,” said Hall.  “This allows the doctors to bill the Ministry [of Health] for their services, obviously. It also allows for clinics to be opened, like the clinic that I’m suggesting.”

Hall says he envisions being able to hire a number of doctors who would be employees of the City of Kamloops, but would still receive their pay through MSP delivered through the province.

His pitch will be put before council on May 6th, though he’s not clear on a timeline as to when the concept could become a reality, provided it gains enough support to move forward, which Hall says he believes it will.