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Doctor recruitment and retention struggles continue

The City of Cold Lake has been recruiting doctors for over a decade, but has little to show for it. “At this point, we are still in the same order of magnitude as where we were 10 years ago,” said city CAO Kevin Nagoya.

The City of Cold Lake has been recruiting doctors for over a decade, but has little to show for it.

“At this point, we are still in the same order of magnitude as where we were 10 years ago,” said city CAO Kevin Nagoya.

Cold Lake has 12 doctors to serve the city and surrounding area. This puts the city below the 2015 rural Alberta average of about 130.5 physicians per 100,000 residents. Cold Lake is currently sitting at a ratio of about 80 physicians per 100,000 residents.

“I think we're going to have to dig deeper into the options that are out there in the community,” Nagoya said in terms of their recruitment program.

Coun. Chris Vining agreed, “We need to fix something in terms of how we are doing things, because that's a glaring disparity. We all know that we have an issue, but when you start putting it against other rural areas outside of the cities, it feels like we are in even deeper.”

At this time, the city is offering a two-year interest-free line of credit to physicians moving into the community, while Hearts for Healthcare provides financial assistance to doctors interested in moving to the area. The organization also gives other incentives such as paying for a doctor's first month of clinic fees, three months of car rental costs, and three months rent.

The Cold Lake Hospital Foundation offers small grants to enhance programs and services at the Cold Lake Healthcare Clinic, and the Medical Development Fund Society provides funding to local healthcare employees, physicians, and students.

“The underlying key factors of getting physicians to come to a community and stay in a community are the working atmosphere, and feeling welcome. If that's what the decision making is and that is what's coming out of the report, then one of those two things are falling off the rails,” Nagoya explained. “Something is disconnected… if that's true in the study, and that's coming from the physicians themselves… then something is off there.”

In their efforts to better understand where they are in terms of recruitment programming, the city looked at other municipalities' recruitment incentives.

Bonnyville offers financial support for recruitment activities and loans, accommodation support, physician training in C-sections, a welcome committee, and ongoing appreciation activities.

St. Paul provides reimbursement on rent and utilities, or accommodations at one or two municipally-owned apartments. They also offer reimbursements of up to 50 per cent for moving expenses with a cap of $5,000, and community tours.

Coun. Bob Buckle said, “The only time we were able to bring in doctors and actually hang onto them was when (Michael) Forbes built his clinic and created some space. I wonder, moving forward as a community, if the concept of actually creating a clinic where heavily subsidized patient rooms or clinic rooms can be made available to doctors, whether that would alleviate the recruitment side in being able to attract people into the community.”

This wasn't the first time the city has discussed opening a clinic in Cold Lake.

“There must be some impediment in being able to set up shop in this community. Maybe it's real estate, rates, availability, all of that must be coming into play for a community of our size not being able to recruit doctors,” Buckle added.

The city has reached out to Alberta Health Services (AHS) and the Minister of Health hoping they will come to Cold Lake and see the need for physicians first-hand.

“We need to get a meeting with AHS to find out if they are comfortable with our doctor to patient ratio, because down the street under Covenant Health they are allowed to do a lot more in terms of freedom,” explained Mayor Craig Copeland. “We have been talking about this subject for years, and nothing has really changed. We are still working on trying to get a meeting.”

Alberta Health Services has the say on which physicians are hired and when, although the recruitment and retention is left up to the local municipality and organizations.

“We have communities to the south of us that are in a much better position physician-wise than we are. Maybe they aren't restricted by the charity status of the Hearts for Healthcare, but when you ask questions about this… it seems as though we have just surrendered back to Alberta Health Services in terms of which doctors are going to come, when they will come, and whether or not they will be accepted,” said Buckle.

He continued, “I'm just not certain as a community… that there is enough work being done on the attraction and retention aspect. I know we are all competing one community to another, and I do know that Hearts for Healthcare raises a tremendous amount of money. We get no new doctors in our community at the end of the day.”

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