The sound of rapturous applause echoed through the City of Colwood's council chambers on Monday (Sept. 23) when plans for a ground-breaking new medical clinic were given the official green light.
In partnership with Aroga Lifestyle Medicine and Pure Pharmacy, the city will open a new municipal clinic in 2025, which when fully staffed, will have the capacity to provide family doctors for 10,000 Colwood residents.
“Ten thousand Colwoodians are gonna be covered and that's a gigantic number,” said Mayor Doug Kobayashi at the meeting. “There’s not going to be any municipality that has more people covered by a family doctor than Colwood.”
The Colwood Clinic will be located at 345A Latoria Blvd. in Royal Bay, which will be leased and managed by the city. Eight family doctors will be recruited and employed by the city.
Outside the site of the new clinic, speaking to Black Press Media, Kobayashi describes a plethora of feelings about the milestone moment for the project – relief, happiness and excitement, are just some of the words he uses.
“I couldn't sleep last night because I was so thrilled,” said Kobayashi. “This is why I became a mayor. I think anyone could be on a council … passing bylaws … it’s all common sense. But doing something like this type of initiative, it affects the entire community more than anything else we can do.”
The city’s project was spurred on by a survey in December 2023 which found 69 per cent of Colwood residents listed the need for a family doctor as their top priority. Kobayashi himself knows all too well the importance of having a family doctor.
“I didn’t realize how important it was until I suffered congestive heart failure,” he said.
Two heart surgeries later, Kobayashi has recovered, but he now lives with diabetes. Which could have been prevented if he had access to a family doctor sooner.
“I was told … we could have diagnosed this way earlier,” he says. “And instead, it ended up costing the taxpayers a lot more money.”
Kobayashi’s experience was echoed by many at Monday night’s meeting. One resident spoke at the meeting about her struggles to access health care, explaining she has not had a family doctor for three years. She described having pneumonia and being forced to wait for hours in the elements outside the Westshore Urgent Primary Care Centre.
“The [health-care] system is way past broken,” she said. "And I think … in my lifetime, it'll be a miracle if it's ever corrected. So I think any initiative to bring physicians to Colwood would be greatly appreciated by everyone.”
Former Colwood mayor David Saunders also spoke at the meeting, praising the city for their plans. “What you are proposing here … is courageous,” he said. “It takes courage, it’s not [been] done before.”
When councillors voted unanimously to advance the Colwood Clinic pilot project, the room packed full of residents who had turned out in force as a show of support, erupted into applause.
“That was just pretty phenomenal to have that many people show up last night, and then the applause, it just caught me off guard,” said Kobayashi. “So now the really hard work begins.”
The medical clinic plans have been described as a blueprint for other municipalities who might want to follow in Colwood’s trailblazing footsteps. Kobayashi noted that he has already been contacted by a representative of another municipality, keen to start their own clinic as soon as possible.
“We're showing some leadership here to be the first of such a model. I think it's brilliant,” said Coun. David Grove. “I think every municipality will quickly roll this out.”
According to city staff, it will take two to three years for the clinic to be fully operational. Once firing on all cylinders, they estimate 50,000 patients will visit the clinic annually.
