The Bonnyville Covenant Health Centre is on the verge of being able to offer primary health care to everyone in the community after successfully recruiting four new physicians.
The local hospital welcomed two new doctors into the family last month, and will see two more arrive as full-time staff members in three months time.
“This community is always growing. We have had so many patients out there without physicians. Throughout our recruitment efforts we are trying to have that eliminated,” said hospital administrator Alex Smyl. “We want every patient who needs a doctor to be able to get one. That is our goal.”
Dr. Keeve De Villiers, a general practitioner who will be assisting in obstetrics and Dr. Marli Du Toit, a fully qualified obstetrician gynecologist, both started at the Bonnyville hospital within the past month.
Dr. Jonathan Barnard and Dr. Theresa Watson arrived in the province on Nov. 8 and will be joining the Bonnyville hospital after a three-month assessment in Westlock. The mandated assessment period is to ensure the doctors training is up to par with Canadian standards.
Once their assessment is complete they will join the rest of the staff in Bonnyville as general practitioners.
“We are extremely fortunate,” said Smyl. “The new group of doctors are already part of the family. They have the same beliefs and are making a great team.”
The four new doctors are part of a group of six that were successfully recruited over the past year by the Bonnyville Physician Recruitment and Retention committee.
In early 2014 many in the community realized that Bonnyville had a serious issue on their hands when it came to recruiting and retaining doctors.
“We faced the challenge of rural doctors not wanting to come out to Bonnyville,” said Community Board Chair Catherine Sandmeyer. “We would get doctors but the would not necessarily stay.”
With the number of physicians at the Bonnyville Covenant Health Centre at a critically low number, officials in the health community joined forces to solve the issue.
“Some of the challenges that we faced in the past was the retention of doctors and the ability to recruit. That was why when we went forward, we had to do something different,” said Bonnyville Mayor Gene Sobolewksi.
The Town of Bonnyville, MD of Bonnyville, and local hospital board joined forces and together, with the help of a template and advice from the Rural Physician Action Plan, created a new process.
“One of the things that we learned, in terms of our challenges, was that it is not about the money. It is about lifestyle,” said Sobolewski.
An integral part of the recruitment and retention committee was the formation of the welcoming committed, which feature representatives from the town, the MD, the hospital and the community.
This committee would meet with potential doctors and tour them around the local hospital and community.
“When the doctors came to Bonnyville, they saw that it was more that just a medical facility,” said Medical Director Guy Lamoureux. “It was a medical community.”
Along with providing a sense of community and showing them all that Bonnyville had to offer, the Town, MD and local hospital board each put up $50,000. The money was placed in a bank account and used to offer loans to perspective doctors wanting to purchase a house in the community.
While the Town and MD supported the new initiative, the backbone of the recruitment committee was Dr. Hercu van der Watt and Dr. Marne Hauptflesch.
The two local doctors were at the centre of the recruitment initiative, making presentations to council and persuading perspective doctors to come to Bonnyville.
“The big thing with this committee is we are trying to sell a sense of community,” said van der Watt. “I initially came here for what I thought was a short period, but it is an incredible place to live and we just need to get that message across to the physicians and hopefully they will stay.”
The work done by the Bonnyville Recruitment and Retention committee turned heads across the province as Bonnyville went from a shortage of five physicians to recruiting six new doctors in less than two years.
Officials with Alberta Rural Physician Action Plan (RPAP) were so impressed with the local committee's well-rounded approach to attracting and retaining physicians that they recognized them with an award for their efforts.
“They recognized that they had an issue and that it had to be solved by having a formal plan and getting everyone, the doctors, the community, and local health community, coming together and attacking it,” said David Kay, Executive Director of RPAP.
The groups ability to sit down at a table with a very large problem and come up with a quick successful way to fix it, has impressed many across the province.
Even though Bonnyville has solved their doctor shortage, the committee is still forging ahead to ensure that the community never has to deal with another critical doctor shortage again.
Earlier this summer the first ever doctor recruitment golf tournament was held to raise funds for the committee so they can keep a large bank of reserve funds on hand.
“A formal approach, bringing everyone together, and acting upon it is a recipe that other communities in Alberta can use. We hope to showcase what Bonnyville has done to other communities so that they can learn,” said Kay
Sobolewski is proud of the accomplishments achieved by the local group and blown away by how quickly it all came together.
“I knew inside my heart we would be successful,” said Sobolewski. “In my wildest dreams never though we would be this successful, this quickly.”
