Interior Health started renovations on the Logan Lake primary-health centre Friday, despite community objections and the apparent promise from the minister that the doctor could keep things as they are.

Coun. Al Smith said he and Mayor Marlon Dosch met Thursday morning with Health Services Minister Kevin Falcon about keeping the community's only doctor on the current salaried clinic model.

"The minister said they'd allow the doctors to choose the current system or to go to fee for service," he said.

"I don't know if our doctor will choose to go to fee for service. But we felt he was being intimidated into going that way."

In fact, the doctor opted to change, said Dr. Jon Slater, medical director for the Thompson-Cariboo-Shuswap.

"The doctor does have a choice and he has made a choice," he said. "It's difficult when you're in a small community to go against the flow."

At a public forum on Logan Lake's health services Thursday night, Interior Health officials told the 300-plus people that the change to the fee-for-service model is coming, Smith said.

"Last night they were sticking to their guns that they were making these changes," he said.

"It got a little heated, yes. Any time you want to say you're taking away services in a small community -- of course."

Logan Lake also faces cutbacks to its weekday emergency services, from 7.5 hours daily to four hours. And nursing is being reduced by 35 per cent.

Smith said Falcon promised to take another look at those cuts, but didn't say he'd stop them.

Slater said IHA's statistics showed the demand is for urgent care, not emergency care, and that could be handled in the doctor's office.

Diane Dosch, wife of the mayor and a school district trustee, said the primary-health model helps attract other physicians.

"We get a lot of doctors who come from outside the country. So they show up with next to nothing. We had a perfect model working here. They just had to step in and start working. They didn't have to worry about starting a business or overhead."

On top of all the other changes, Logan Lake's lone doctor is moving to Kamloops in April.

"So he'll be commuting. That's just the first step doctors take when they're going to leave town," said Dosch.

Slater said there are doctors in other communities who commute from Kamloops, such as those working in Chase.

The doctor in Logan Lake is considering bringing a partner into his private practice if the numbers show it could support two physicians, he said.

Slater said he also has a doctor interested in working in Logan Lake on a fee for service basis.

© 2010 The Daily News (Kamloops)