The Bonnyville Regional Health Centre is on the verge of being able to offer primary health care to everyone in the community, after successfully recruiting six new doctors.
The new physicians entering the community are thanks to months of hard work put in by the recently created Bonnyville physician recruitment and retention committee.
“Through the support of the committee, with the help of the Town and the MD, we have been able to recruit six physicians in the last six months,” said Dr. Hercu van der Watt. “One of them is a specialist in obstetrics and gynecology, which is something that is very scarce.”
Two of the doctors have already been practicing in the community for the past several months, while the other four doctors are all expected to arrive in the spring and summer.
“I am very confident, that should all of these physicians be actively practicing by June, we will be able to offer primary health care to most of the people in the community,” said van der Watt. “That's something that not a lot of other places in Alberta can say.”
The influx of doctors comes just months after the local health care centre had entered “crisis mode”, after losing five physicians within a very short period of time.
“It lead to a difficulty in providing the available health care services to our community and the possibility of ER closures and the disruption of hospital services,” said van der Watt.
Back in June, the hospital had 21 full-time physicians, a number van der Watt said was “roughly” six doctors short of what was required to keep services at the centre up to scratch.
With that in mind, van der Watt, Dr. Travis Webster and hospital administrator Alex Smyll attempted to look into different avenues to bring new doctors into the community.
“With the competition for available doctors around Canada being very competitive a new plan needed to be made to recruit and also to retain physicians to the Bonnyville community, said van der Watt. “Something that could not be done without the help of the community.”
The Bonnyville physician recruitment and retention committee was created and included those three members of the local health care centre teaming up with Bonnyville town council, local MLA Genia Leskiw and the MD of Bonnyville Council.
A global doctor shortage resulted in the hospital needing to hire a recruitment agency to indentify doctors willing to move to Bonnyville. The only problem was, those “head hunters” cost around $20,000 per doctor.
After consulting the Town and the MD, the hospital was given the necessary funds to hire a recruiting agency and start the search for doctors.
The MD offered up $15,000 towards the doctor recruitment program, with the Town also chipping in $15,000. The Town, MD and Health Centre also all each tossed $50,000 into a pot, which would be used to give new doctors loans once they moved to the community.
The locals knew the money they had on hand wouldn't be able to compete with the large $100,000 bonuses some communities were forking over for physicians to move into the region, so they decided to focus their attention on selling the Bonnyville community.
“In my experience financial incentive for most physicians is not that important,” said van der Watt. “What is important is lifestyle and sense of community. We needed to create an atmosphere where a visiting physician can come to Bonnyville and can really see what Bonnyville is about; meet members of the community, meet the other physician staff and try and convey that Bonnyville is an amazing place to work.”
A welcoming committee was created and used to try and entice visiting doctors to come to Bonnyville and lay down their roots.
According to van der Watt, the decisions by the first two doctors recruited by this committee were directly influenced by the welcoming committee, who really gave them a sense of what Bonnyville was all about.
“Even though they were offered a lot more money by other communities, they decided to come to Bonnyville because of this committee,” said van der Watt.
The four new doctors are all expected to be practicing at the Bonnyville Regional Health Center within the coming months. With their arrival the hospital will see some relief.
“It will allow us to expand our current services by increasing the amount of ER coverage, thus decreasing waiting times, which I think is part of a lot of concerns from the people in this community,” said van der Watt.
