The Town of Bonnyville will put funds toward enticing doctors to move to and work in the community.
The decision came at last Tuesday's regular council meeting, which came on the heals of a meeting earlier this summer between town council, MD Reeve Ed Rondeau, MLA for Bonnyville – Cold Lake Genia Leskiw and several representatives from the Bonnyville Regional Health Centre.
The local hospital currently has 21 full-time physicians on hand, a number hospital administrator Alex Smyll stated was “roughly” six doctors short of what was required to keep services at the centre up to scratch.
At the meeting back in July, Smyll said the facility was currently the “busiest it has ever been,” typically treating between 50 and 165 patients per day. Even though the hospital was built to treat an average of 12,000 people per year, Smyll said current averages state the hospital is currently seeing between 35,000 and 45,000.
The hospital is currently in the process of recruiting two doctors, but will still need an additional four doctors in order to maintain a desired level of service. Smyll said there were significant costs involved with recruiting doctors though, and asked that the Town and MD of Bonnyville provide some financial assistance to the cause.
Because of a global doctor shortage, Smyll said the hospital has to hire recruiting agencies to identify doctors that might be willing to move to Bonnyville, but he said those agencies typically charge a hefty $20,000 recruitment fee.
Speaking at last week's council meeting, Mayor Gene Sobolewski said he'd recently sat in on a meeting with the MD of Bonnyville and the hospital board to see what they could do to help appease the currently situation.
“The goal here for us, for the MD and for the hospital is to come up with some way to help fund head hunting costs,” Sobolewski said. “We do have a doctor shortage and this is something that affects each and every resident in this region that uses our hospital, so I think we have to do something.”
He added, “The second thing we'll be helping with is assisting with the revolving loan the hospital typically offers its new recruits so that when they come over here they can get a car, acquire property, all those sorts of things. From what I believe, the MD has already approved the loan, so lets see what we can do to try and help the hospital get these folks over here.”
Town council voted unanimously to approve a non-refundable contribution of $15,000 to the Bonnyville medical centre doctor recruitment fund, while also committing a further refundable $50,000 to be used to assist new doctors with funds to set themselves up in the area.