A new task force took its first steps toward addressing a perceived shortage of family doctors in St. Albert.
Meeting for the first time Wednesday, the mayor's task force on physician attraction ended an hour-long session by breaking into two subcommittees, one charged with performing a needs assessment and another with starting work on a plan to attract doctors.
"The first question that needs to be answered is what is the real need," said Mayor Nolan Crouse, who spearheaded the effort.
A shortage of family doctors has been on Crouse's radar since about March, when he learned that many St. Albert residents were travelling to a new clinic built in Spruce Grove by a group of doctor partners.
Crouse, like other council members, has heard plenty of anecdotal evidence from residents who are frustrated at not being able to find a family doctor in St. Albert. However, there are no hard numbers to define the problem, leaving task force members at a loss about what action is required.
"I'm confident that things are going to happen. I don't know what those things are but things will start to happen," Crouse said.
The meeting attracted 16 people, including family doctors, local health care entrepreneurs, Alberta Health Services officials and local residents. Many around the table voiced the opinion that the problem must be more clearly defined before meaningful action can be taken.
Coun. Cathy Heron will head up the needs assessment subcommittee, which will rely on the local primary care network to carry out a "small, quick survey" in an attempt to quantify the number of people who don't have a family doctor.
That effort will likely take six to nine months, Heron said. But in the meantime council will deal with other aspects of the health supply issue, such as deciding whether or not to allow medical facilities to locate in business parks.
Overall, Heron was pleased to see so many at the table eager to tackle the problem.
"If St. Albert is going to aggressively find answers, I think that's a positive," she said.
It's very difficult to get good data on how many people are without a doctor, said Dr. Wayne Daviduck, president of the St. Albert and Sturgeon Primary Care Network.
"It's like hitting a moving target," he said.
Coun. Malcolm Parker will chair the second subcommittee that will analyze the health care assets and gaps that exist in St. Albert. When combined with the results of Heron's research, this information will begin to take the shape of an action plan, Parker said.
"I think we're really involved in an area that's a priority for the community simply because the community is growing, it's aging and we have to address the needs," he said. "I've heard from people that they just can't seem to find somebody. They have to go to other communities."
Build a complex
An opinion that surfaced often throughout the first meeting was that the doctor supply situation in St. Albert is very complex and won't be solved by a single act, such as building a complex with a broad array of medical facilities under one roof, like was done in Spruce Grove a few years ago.
"Be careful what you're trying to fix by building a building," warned Linda Cargill, a former administrator of the Sturgeon Community Hospital who now oversees community and rural hospitals for the Edmonton zone of Alberta Health Services.
It's unfair to compare St. Albert to communities like Spruce Grove because St. Albert has a big city hospital that draws people from a wider geographical area, which changes the entire dynamic of the local medical landscape, Cargill said.
"I think we have multiple questions what the need is," she said.
Yet the idea that some sort of building or complex is part of the solution endures. Both Parker and Heron said they want to explore that avenue.
Crouse told the group that he's been approached by two developers who are ready to build medical-related facilities but their land isn't zoned appropriately. A third potential developer wants to buy land and build a facility but isn't sure of the need, Crouse said.
The Gazette also is aware that the doctor group that built the Spruce Grove centre is interested in someday building in St. Albert.
Dr. Darryl LaBuick of the Grandin Medical Clinic warned against believing that a building is the ultimate solution, though he said it could play a part.
"If they want to build a building and try and attract health care practitioners into their building, I think it's a great idea," he said. "I certainly wouldn't want to see them get any type of political advantages that other businesses in the community do not have equal access to."
But the problem is far more complex, he said, tracing its history back to government decisions in the late 1980s that led to decreased medical school enrolment and then budget cuts in the 1990s.
With the aging of the population, the system will never be able to "catch up" and replace all its retiring doctors with new graduates until the baby boomers die off, he said.
This means that people have to accept that health care has changed to more of a team approach that will mean more and more contact with other types of health professionals, such as nurses. The bottom line is that, in the future, getting medical help will be less and less centred around a visit to the family doctor.
"Those days are over," LaBuick said, "and they're never coming back."
