BC’s Health Minister is promising Kamloopsians that a plan to keep the doors of the city’s largest maternity clinic open is in the works. 

Adrian Dix says his Ministry is working with the doctors and healthcare professionals at the Thompson Region Family Obstetrics Clinic to ensure there is continuing care for pregnant people.

“That requires and has required a change of payment model, the way we deal with that because we have made some fundamental changes across the system of doctors. It also requires support from other health professionals.”

Additionally, he says solutions also include changes that support team-based care and collective recruitment of new people due to an increase in demand in the Kamloops region.

Dix says his ministry is in the process of identifying the best solutions to deal with the impending closure, suggesting the hope is to ensure prenatal services will be available this summer.

“What we are doing here, is doing what we have done in all these other cases which is sitting down with health professionals, working out things that work with them,” said Dix.

“People ask me about this and say ‘Well, what is the progress?’ and the progress is that we are working together on short-term solutions and more importantly, solutions that take and last.”

Dix says the slow progress over the last few months is due to the fact that the province is working to ensure that the solutions it comes up with are permanent.

Roughly three months ago, the maternity clinic announced plans to potentially shutter its clinic this summer, which is not accepting any patients with an expected due date past July 31, due to a lack of doctors.

TRFO Doctor Shaun Davis told NL News back in February that doctor recruitment for obstetrics in Kamloops has been an ongoing problem for years.

“The long-standing issue in maternity care throughout the province is that the number of physicians are doing family practiced based obstetrics is gradually declining.”

RELATED: Health Minister optimistic about future of Thompson Region Family Obstetrics clinic in Kamloops

Back in April, Dix said he was optimistic about the future of the Thompson Region Family Obstetrics clinic, saying they have been working “very closely” with the maternity healthcare professionals in Kamloops.