This Family Doctor Is Leaving Bc. Other Doctors Are Among Her Orphaned Patients

Dr. Anna Chodyra has crossed land and sea to practice medicine. Originally from Poland, the 47-year-old first immigrated to Canada as an international medical graduate in 2001. She made her home in Calgary before crossing the Rockies in 2006 when she moved to the small town of Port Moody in the Tri-Cities region of BC’s Lower Mainland, just east of Vancouver. He worked there for 13 years before following the Barnet Highway east to Coquitlam where he joined Meadowbrook Family Practice. The family doctor said she currently has a patient pool of 2,100 – and she’s not sure where any of them will go when she and her family move to New Zealand this autumn. “It’s a very difficult decision, knowing that I’m leaving my patients without finding someone to replace me, leaving them alone,” Chodira said, adding that she never planned to leave BC. “We tried to find a replacement doctor, but we couldn’t. No one is taking over the practice anymore.” Chodyra closed her BC practice. in late June as he prepares to join a new family practice group in the small town of Waihi, about two hours southeast of Auckland. Dr. Anna Khodyra said she has struggled to find a new doctor to take over her patient list since announcing plans to close her practice at the end of June. (Justine Boulin/CBC) She said the decision stems from a need to be closer to her husband’s family in Australia and because of “the state of primary care in BC,” including the province’s current fee-for-service system and staff shortages that she says will be less of a problem in New Zealand, where he will have five nurses and three doctors helping patients. “Family doctors, we don’t feel supported and we really feel undervalued,” he said. Her impending departure, however, has sent shockwaves throughout the Tri-Cities as her patients scramble to find new family doctors amid a shortage where about a million British Columbians are already without a primary care doctor. The Fraser Northwest Division of Family Practice (FNDFP) — a not-for-profit organization that partners with and supports family physicians in Anmore, Belcarra, Coquitlam, New Westminster, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody — said its membership has dropped seven percent in past year. He estimates that, across the six communities, there are 170 primary providers, about 49 of whom live in Coquitlam. The nonprofit’s program director, Jessie Mather-Lingley, said since 2014, Coquitlam has lost nearly 50 family practitioners. He said 15 of those were from 2021, either due to retirement, relocation or changing roles in health care. The BC Ministry of Health said in a statement that it is “committed to ensuring that all British Columbians have access to health care when they need it.” “The number of family doctors has increased by almost nine per cent since 2016-17 to 6,760 FPs (family practitioners) in the province in 2020-21. This is an average annual increase of 2.1 per cent.” But Chodyra and other doctors worry that patients who can’t find new doctors will turn to acute care providers like hospital emergency departments for non-urgent care because they have no other choice, further burdening British Columbia’s health care system with delays and increased costs.

Doctors without doctors

For family doctor Mahsa Mackie, Chodyra’s departure hits particularly close to home. Along with working in Coquitlam, he is also one of the patients Chodyra leaves behind. “If someone we think has many years ahead of them closes their practice or leaves the community, it’s never a good sign,” Mackie said. Mackie, who completed her residency in 2014, said the hardest part of her doctor’s decision to close is knowing that she and her colleagues at Manhas Health Co. Health Clinic will not be able to accept all the “orphans” of Chodyra. “I have a few thousand patients and my wait time is already a few weeks. Taking on more patients means my current patients won’t get timely access to care.” Mackie said she has taken some of Chodyra’s patients, but that many others have been stuck on the clinic’s waiting list, which has been growing since she joined in 2021.

“Orphaned” patients can strain ER resources

Emergency physician Dr. Ali Abdalvand, who is also a member of Chodyra’s current roster, tells CBC that orphaned patients will turn to temporary stopgaps like urgent primary care or urgent care if they can’t find a family doctor in their community. “The purpose of having emergency medicine as a specialty and the emergency department as part of the health care system is to provide acute unscheduled care,” Dr. Abdalvand said. A paramedic is pictured at St. Paul’s in Vancouver in January. The emergency physician, Dr. Ali Abdalvand, worries that patients will turn to temporary stop-gaps like urgent care if they can’t find a family doctor in their community. (Ben Nelms/CBC) “If you end up sharing an emergency department’s resources to provide primary care, that will leave less and less of those resources to provide acute unscheduled care.” Data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, meanwhile, shows that emergency department costs across Canada have risen in recent years. The cost of an emergency department visit increased from $96 in 2005-2006 to $158 in 2018-2019, an annual growth rate of 4%. Emergency physician Dr. Ali Abdalvand worries that a glut of primary care patients will strain his department’s resources as more British Columbians struggle to find a family doctor. (Shawn Foss/CBC) The same data set also shows that, in 2018-2019, emergency department staff in BC worked more overtime than anywhere else in Canada except the Northwest Territories, at 9.14 per cent of all hours worked. As he searches for a new family doctor, Abdalvad tells CBC the province is losing “one of the best doctors” it has ever known. “I know patients who have told me that [Chodyra] he went and got it [their] the prescription was filled … and he left it,” she said. “This is above and beyond [care]. And that makes me sad.”

title: “This Family Doctor Is Leaving Bc. Other Doctors Are Among Her Orphaned Patients " ShowToc: true date: “2022-10-29” author: “Raquel Miller”

Dr. Anna Chodyra has crossed land and sea to practice medicine. Originally from Poland, the 47-year-old first immigrated to Canada as an international medical graduate in 2001. She made her home in Calgary before crossing the Rockies in 2006 when she moved to the small town of Port Moody in the Tri-Cities region of BC’s Lower Mainland, just east of Vancouver. He worked there for 13 years before following the Barnet Highway east to Coquitlam where he joined Meadowbrook Family Practice. The family doctor said she currently has a patient pool of 2,100 – and she’s not sure where any of them will go when she and her family move to New Zealand this autumn. “It’s a very difficult decision, knowing that I’m leaving my patients without finding someone to replace me, leaving them alone,” Chodira said, adding that she never planned to leave BC. “We tried to find a replacement doctor, but we couldn’t. No one is taking over the practice anymore.” Chodyra closed her BC practice. in late June as he prepares to join a new family practice group in the small town of Waihi, about two hours southeast of Auckland. Dr. Anna Khodyra said she has struggled to find a new doctor to take over her patient list since announcing plans to close her practice at the end of June. (Justine Boulin/CBC) She said the decision stems from a need to be closer to her husband’s family in Australia and because of “the state of primary care in BC,” including the province’s current fee-for-service system and staff shortages that she says will be less of a problem in New Zealand, where he will have five nurses and three doctors helping patients. “Family doctors, we don’t feel supported and we really feel undervalued,” he said. Her impending departure, however, has sent shockwaves throughout the Tri-Cities as her patients scramble to find new family doctors amid a shortage where about a million British Columbians are already without a primary care doctor. The Fraser Northwest Division of Family Practice (FNDFP) — a not-for-profit organization that partners with and supports family physicians in Anmore, Belcarra, Coquitlam, New Westminster, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody — said its membership has dropped seven percent in past year. He estimates that, across the six communities, there are 170 primary providers, about 49 of whom live in Coquitlam. The nonprofit’s program director, Jessie Mather-Lingley, said since 2014, Coquitlam has lost nearly 50 family practitioners. He said 15 of those were from 2021, either due to retirement, relocation or changing roles in health care. The BC Ministry of Health said in a statement that it is “committed to ensuring that all British Columbians have access to health care when they need it.” “The number of family doctors has increased by almost nine per cent since 2016-17 to 6,760 FPs (family practitioners) in the province in 2020-21. This is an average annual increase of 2.1 per cent.” But Chodyra and other doctors worry that patients who can’t find new doctors will turn to acute care providers like hospital emergency departments for non-urgent care because they have no other choice, further burdening British Columbia’s health care system with delays and increased costs.

Doctors without doctors

For family doctor Mahsa Mackie, Chodyra’s departure hits particularly close to home. Along with working in Coquitlam, he is also one of the patients Chodyra leaves behind. “If someone we think has many years ahead of them closes their practice or leaves the community, it’s never a good sign,” Mackie said. Mackie, who completed her residency in 2014, said the hardest part of her doctor’s decision to close is knowing that she and her colleagues at Manhas Health Co. Health Clinic will not be able to accept all the “orphans” of Chodyra. “I have a few thousand patients and my wait time is already a few weeks. Taking on more patients means my current patients won’t get timely access to care.” Mackie said she has taken some of Chodyra’s patients, but that many others have been stuck on the clinic’s waiting list, which has been growing since she joined in 2021.

“Orphaned” patients can strain ER resources

Emergency physician Dr. Ali Abdalvand, who is also a member of Chodyra’s current roster, tells CBC that orphaned patients will turn to temporary stopgaps like urgent primary care or urgent care if they can’t find a family doctor in their community. “The purpose of having emergency medicine as a specialty and the emergency department as part of the health care system is to provide acute unscheduled care,” Dr. Abdalvand said. A paramedic is pictured at St. Paul’s in Vancouver in January. The emergency physician, Dr. Ali Abdalvand, worries that patients will turn to temporary stop-gaps like urgent care if they can’t find a family doctor in their community. (Ben Nelms/CBC) “If you end up sharing an emergency department’s resources to provide primary care, that will leave less and less of those resources to provide acute unscheduled care.” Data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, meanwhile, shows that emergency department costs across Canada have risen in recent years. The cost of an emergency department visit increased from $96 in 2005-2006 to $158 in 2018-2019, an annual growth rate of 4%. Emergency physician Dr. Ali Abdalvand worries that a glut of primary care patients will strain his department’s resources as more British Columbians struggle to find a family doctor. (Shawn Foss/CBC) The same data set also shows that, in 2018-2019, emergency department staff in BC worked more overtime than anywhere else in Canada except the Northwest Territories, at 9.14 per cent of all hours worked. As he searches for a new family doctor, Abdalvad tells CBC the province is losing “one of the best doctors” it has ever known. “I know patients who have told me that [Chodyra] he went and got it [their] the prescription was filled … and he left it,” she said. “This is above and beyond [care]. And that makes me sad.”