Progress is moving forward on making the Lakeland a hub for healthcare excellence.
A group of Lakeland politicians from Cold Lake, the Town and MD of Bonnyville, Town and County of St. Paul, and Elk Point, along with local health professionals, came together late last month for the first official meeting of the regional healthcare committee.
“We tried to use this meeting as a start up meeting to form a committee to get a terms of reference. We also developed a mission and vision statement, which I feel is pretty important to keep everybody on track and explain what we're trying to do,” said Dr. Hendrik van der Watt, Bonnyville doctor and physician lead of the regional healthcare committee. “It hasn't been approved by the committee yet, but the preliminary vision statement is communities collaborating for excellence in Lakeland healthcare delivery. Our mission is: regional initiative involving local stakeholders that, through a platform for dialogue and collaboration, will create an effective and efficient healthcare provision and management, to improve and expand healthcare delivery for the Lakeland region.”
Together, the group set out the first two priorities they will be pushing to achieve for the area – 24 hour access to CT coverage, and improved access to mental healthcare beds.
“We're going to focus on a couple of issues and deal with those at first. That way it's not so cumbersome and we're not going to inundate the minister with a lot of things we can't deal with at one time,” explained St. Paul Mayor Glenn Anderson, who added that mental health one of the specialties St. Paul is bringing to the table.
“We have a psychiatry ward. Currently it's only running at half capacity – 10 beds are open and 10 beds are closed.”
The idea to take a look at healthcare on a regional level was first proposed by van der Watt back in March. It was an idea that flowed out of the Bonnyville recruitment committee, after seeing tremendous success bringing in doctors to the local hospital. Knowing that communities across the region are struggling with different aspects of healthcare, van der Watt approached representatives from each community with his vision.
“All of the mayors and reeves that were in the room are unanimously in favour to holistically look at our region as a health delivery centre. Not a building, but a cluster of buildings,” said Bonnyville Mayor Gene Sobolewski. “We're all in this together. All of us mayors and reeves are one single voice to get this thing going, in concert with our medical staff.”
Anderson added, “We've recognized that instead of competing, we can make the Lakeland area strong with regards to healthcare by working together and addressing the strengths of each community and trying to enhance those strengths as we move forward. If we can keep the health dollars in our region, we can address the health concerns of our residents altogether.”
The new initiative is the first of its kind for Alberta, to have communities working together on a common goal when it comes to healthcare. It's caught the attention of officials in not just the Lakeland, but neighbouring municipalities.
While the committee wants to stay within the communities currently involved, according to van der Watt, they're happy to share the idea with other areas for them to replicate.
With politicians at a local level on board with the regional healthcare committee, van der Watt added that they're going to continue to communicate with Alberta Health Services (AHS) and the health minister, keeping them informed and pushing their cause.
“There seems to be a general acceptance within the hallow halls of AHS, but there is still a little bit of pushback,” Sobolewski told Bonnyville Town Council during their Sept. 27 meeting. “It's a phenomenal initiative. I don't think AHS has seen anything like this before, and I think they're having a little bit of trouble with how to react to it.”
Now that the group has formally met and developed their first priorities, their next step is to pass along the committee's goals to Alberta's health minister.
“I was tasked with putting together a letter on everyone's behalf, my letter will go to everybody to have a look at it and sign off on it. Hopefully we'll have a letter out (this week) to the minister and the CAO,” explained Cold Lake Mayor Craig Copeland. “We just want to focus on two issues at a time from a regional perspective and have small wins.”
