Dr. Brendan Flowers sat down with Cochrane Now yesterday to provide an update on efforts to attract more family doctors to Cochrane and the new medical clinic now under construction in the Fireside neighbourhood. We previously caught up with him in early October.

Two doctors who recently joined the Maple Leaf Health Centre have given notice, are no longer accepting new patients, and will instead serve as locum physicians.

Dr. Flowers says patients who were seeing Dr. Celeste Dietrichsen and Dr. Jacques Van Straaten will be receiving letters to advise them of their departure. The two doctors will continue to see patients with existing appointments one morning a week until Jan. 31, 2022.

"This is a surprise to us and we know this is frustrating and disappointing to the community, but we're trying to have a positive spin on this, and we remain dedicated to the health care of Cochrane," he says.

The medical centre continues to actively seek more family doctors to serve Cochrane.

"We don't have a timeline for them at this point, but we do have some prospects, and we will continue to find physicians. We're looking at other avenues."

Among those avenues is reaching out to Cochranites who may know of physicians interested in relocating to Cochrane.

"If anyone knows any physicians within their networks, please send them our way. Put it on Facebook, put it on social media, however you can. This is really now a community-wide effort."

The Maple Leaf medical Centre has waitlists of several hundred people searching for a family doctor.

In the meantime, construction of a second clinic adjacent to the Maple Leaf Medical Centre continues. There's no firm timeline on its opening, but he says it's getting closer.

The full Zoom interview is attached for viewing.

The town has also been working to recruit new physicians.

Last week, Mayor Jeff Genung said AHS is actively recruiting six family doctors for Cochrane and was told four had been located but received no timelines.

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