Rural Physician and Health Professionals Committee Requests Financial Support

Rural Physician and Health Professionals Committee Requests Financial Support

Michelle Pinon News Advertiser

The Physician and Health Professionals Attraction & Retention Committee has requested funding from the Town of Vegreville.

The committee thanked council for its financial support in recent years in a letter stating, “Your support has been invaluable to enable us to continue to recruit new physicians to our community.”

The letter went on to say, “We would like to respectfully request the financial support from the Town for the next three years. Our goal is to look ahead of future needs for our community for doctors and health professionals to ensure needs are addressed.”

As to how much money the committee would like to receive, it was not specified in the letter of request. The committee has received $78,125 since 2012 from the Town of Vegreville. A total of $20,000 was granted in April of 2012 and $58, 125 was granted in 2013.

Councillor Ann Waters is the current representative for the town on the committee and stated, “We struggle with obtaining physicians and health professionals to a rural community. We try to offset this by holding meet and greets with prospective health professionals, host a skills day at our local hospital for university students, and host a skills day at our local hospital for our high school students who are looking to embark on the health care field.

We have had a major success with having a Health Care Aide Program in Vegreville. We were in partnership with Norquest and had seven students of which all were employed locally during their studies or right after. This is a huge accomplishment as Alberta has a large shortage of Health Care Aides, and we were fortunate to have our own local people able to take the course at home and be employed at home. This is something that we will be engaging with Norquest again once we are able to align the course with COVID regulations.”

Coun. Waters said the committee had hosted a “Welcome” event a couple of years ago for all new health professionals who have been working in Vegreville for the last five years and less. It was surprisingly neat to see the new connections that were made.”

The committee has ten plus members with an array of representation from Vegreville Town Council, Minburn County Council, Alberta Health Services (AHS), Vegreville Family Clinic, St. Joseph’s General Hospital, Primary Care Network (PCN), Covenant Health Foundation, Rural Health Professions Action Plan (RhPAP), and the Yellow Head East Association.

The committee began as an adhoc committee of council in 2005 to deal with the doctor shortage and has evolved into the community committee it is today.

These are just a few of the things we do. We are here to help all Physicians and Health Professionals get a good start in Vegreville and we are here to help them as they need us. We still have a shortage of physicians and hope to have the positions filled as quickly as possible. We all know that Vegreville is a great place to work, live, and play. We just need to get the word out farther.”

In a report to council Sept.28, Coun. Waters said they need one or two doctors and will be advertising those positions. Currently, one doctor is waiting to be placed on a three-month clinical assessment. “In October exams are happening and maybe we’ll have more applications once that takes place.”

She also reported the hospital is at 90 to 100 percent capacity. “The majority of those are seniors waiting for placement. So that’s taking up a lot of vital beds right there for sure.”