Shoreline clinic doctors do shifts at Saanich Peninsula Hospital on a rotating basis, but as funding from a local foundation ends, the society says it may not be able to continue the program.
A non-profit clinic operator says it needs to raise $150,000 over the next year if its physicians are to continue providing services at Saanich Peninsula Hospital.
Shoreline Medical Society, which operates two clinics on the Saanich Peninsula, was told by Saanich Peninsula Hospital and Healthcare Foundation last spring that funding that has totalled about $4 million over seven years would end on March 31, 2026.
The society pegged the shortfall at $150,000 for 2026, and has raised $20,000 so far, but is concerned about long-term sustainability.
Shoreline doctors do seven-day shifts at the hospital about every six to eight weeks on a rotating basis as part of Saanich Peninsula Hospital’s “doctor of the day” program.
“Doctor of the day” is essentially the same job as that of a hospital-based doctor, called a hospitalist, in which a family doctor cares for admitted patients and assists in other ways in the hospital.
Just over a third of the family physicians who participate come from Shoreline Medical clinics — 12 family physicians and two nurse practitioners.
But when those physicians are working at the hospital, they don’t contribute to the clinic’s overhead, which pays for its operations.
If the society can’t bring in a locum to cover the physicians at the clinic, there’s a gap in the overhead contributions, said Leslie Keenan, executive director of Shoreline Medical Society.
Shoreline had been using some of its foundation funding to cover those gaps, said Keenan.
Founded in 2015, the Shoreline Medical Society operates one primary care clinic in Brentwood Bay and one in Sidney served by 23 full-time equivalent physicians and two nurse practitioners. The Sidney clinic also houses a youth clinic for mental and sexual health education.
Shoreline’s gross annual expenses are about $3 million, including operating expenses for the two clinics and youth clinic and the society’s expenses — recruitment incentives, capital and more.
It’s a founding principle of the society that clinic physicians would also do rounds at Saanich Peninsula Hospital to ensure the hospital’s viability, said Keenan.
Dr. Andrea Lewis, one of Shoreline’s founding physicians and board chair, said supporting the long-term sustainability of the hospital “was one of the reasons Shoreline was founded.”
“But it requires resources and co-ordination beyond what typical primary-care clinics are set up to provide,” she said.
After receiving notice of the end of foundation funding, the society hired its own fundraiser and mounted a campaign that raised $500,000.
Keenan said the community is highly supportive of the society’s clinics and programs and was generous, but it can’t depend on donations on an ongoing basis, “especially in today’s climate when things are tight for everybody.”
She said while she appreciates all the foundation has given the society, she doesn’t fully understand the rationale for ending the contributions.
The foundation, for its part, said it had stepped up to provide “start-up support” for Shoreline Medical Society.
But with every startup, “there’s a stop and a start of funding,” said Heather Edward, executive director of the Peninsula Hospital and Healthcare Foundation, who was appointed in 2024.
“We’re not withdrawing funding — we’ve just notified them that our funding has concluded because we’ve redirected, because the community has asked us to fund family doctors in the whole community.”
The foundation noted that there are about 14,500 people on the Peninsula without a family doctor, so it’s focusing on its new Healthcare Assist Recruitment Program, HARP, which began last spring and has already recruited five of an anticipated 13 family doctors.
The foundation has asked the recruiter to find doctors willing to serve at Saanich Peninsula Hospital, it said.
“Right now, people are screaming for a family doctor, and when they have a family doctor, that means that they’re no longer having to go to hospital, hopefully, because they can have their chronic care needs addressed,” Edward said.
She said that by funding Shoreline, the foundation was trying to “to step in where Island Health should have been doing the compensation,” noting the gap has been more than $300,000 some years.
Edward said the foundation met with Island Health over a year ago and informed the health authority it was “passing it over [and that] they need to take control of it, they need to fund it.”
“We talked to Island Health, we talked to Shoreline, we communicated clearly, and it’s their responsibility to secure the contracts with the government over health-care dollars.”
Edward said the foundation has committed $23 million to Island Health over the next year, helping with projects including the redevelopment of Saanich Peninsula Hospital’s acute-care unit and funding hospital equipment, education and physician recruitment.
She noted that Shoreline Medical, like other clinics in the area, can still apply to any of the foundation’s programs for funding, but anything related to the doctor-of-the-day program is Island Health’s responsibility.
In a statement, Island Health said it’s aware of the situation and committed to working closely with Shoreline Medical Society, Saanich Peninsula physicians and other partners to explore solutions, saying its goal is to ensure “continuity of care” at Saanich Peninsula Hospital.
Shoreline Medical physician Dr. Chris Dowler, who does rounds at the hospital, said without Shoreline doctors doing in-patient care at Saanich Peninsula Hospital, “it would not likely be able to function as an acute-care facility.”
Aside from caring for admitted patients on the wards, some doctor-of-the-day physicians assist in surgeries, see less-acute patients with routine needs in the emergency department, and provide long-term and palliative care, he said.
Dowler said when Shoreline first opened, its mandate was to hire physicians who wanted to do primary care as as well as serve the community hospital.
“We were extremely successful at that, and consequently, Saanich Peninsula Hospital has continued to be able to function as an acute-care facility,” he said.