Nurse practitioner Maryanne Smith won top prize for her local business venture from Community Futures’ Local Entrepreneurship Accelerator Program (LEAP) at the annual general meeting on June 24.
Maryanne was awarded $1,000 for Health Access NP, the fee for service (FFS) clinic she is planning to open in downtown Sechelt this fall.
“It’s primarily for common health illnesses that do not require treatment in an emergency room,” she said. “So like primary health care, screening, chronic disease management and some minor treatments like pap smears for women.”
This was LEAP’s third annual event. This year it was done with the theme of a Dragons’ Den-esque game show. Six contestants pitched their business ideas to a panel of judges including Brian Smith (no relation to Maryanne), executive director of Community Futures.
Brian said LEAP is interested in supporting small businesses, especially small businesses that are going to be good for the Sunshine Coast community.
“Good for our community means they have not just a financial bottom line, but a blended value bottom line,” he said. “Meaning they’re good for a social return on our investment, or ecological or cultural return on our investment.”
Although all of the local entrepreneurs walked away with some money to help their ventures, Maryanne took the grand prize of $1,000.
“That business concept has the potential to have a huge impact in terms of providing more health care, not to mention economic development and jobs for local people,” Brian said.
“People are having a lot of trouble finding a family physician,” Maryanne said. “When they do have a family physician they’re waiting a couple of weeks, a week for an appointment to see their doctor. I think a lot of people are unhappy with that. I offer easy, quick, safe, reliable access to health care.”
FFS is a business model that unbundles services so a patient pays for the tests or treatments they need to have done, instead of a standardized fee for the visit.
The idea behind this is to offer more transparency for patients and encourage doctors to perform more tests.
Maryanne is currently finishing her clinic’s incorporation process. She will be the first nurse practitioner in BC to run an FFS clinic.
“My ideal is to have nurse practitioners all across B.C. open their own private practices and walk-in clinics for FFS until the B.C. government can cover us under the Medical Services Plan,” Maryanne said.
A nurse practitioner is a registered nurse who has additional training and experience and an advanced degree.
She pointed out that this is the same way midwives started. Midwives are now covered under MSP, but when they first started offering services, they charged a fee.
Health Access NP will be located in the Hummingbird Clinic on Mermaid Street, where Maryanne is working alongside two naturopathic doctors.
Although she hasn’t hired additional nurse practitioners to her staff yet, she is hoping to encourage more nurse practitioners onto the Coast.
The LEAP event and Community Future’s AGM also included acknowledgements for the directors on their board who are retiring, especially Brian Wilbee. Wilbee has been on the board of directors for the last 27 years.
A new endowment is being set up through the Sunshine Coast Community Foundation in Wilbee’s name to support community economic development on the Sunshine Coast.
