While emergency rooms, surgery waiting lists and long-term care spaces have dominated health care for many Albertans, one of the biggest problems in health care in St. Albert is the lack of a family doctor.
St. Albertans have found it increasingly difficult to find a family physician with many local doctors not taking new patients because they simply don’t have the resources.
Spruce Grove-St. Albert Liberal candidate Chris Austin said part of his party’s sweeping plan for health care includes getting every Albertan a doctor.
“Within two years we would like to see everybody have a family physician.”
Austin said the current government has gradually allowed those services to decline.
“There have been a depletion of services since the Getty years all the way up until now.”
He said his party’s plan to boost homecare funding would take pressure off the rest of the system and free up funds that could be used to attract and train more physicians.
“That will free up a lot more money so that we can use it to invite people who want to become family physicians.”
NDP candidate J.J. Trudeau said her party would work to alleviate the shortage by making sure the province recognized foreign credentials better.
“There are persons who are driving cabs or at the very best have a nursing degree, because their doctor credentials aren’t recognized,” she said. “That sort of thing still goes on and it needs to be stopped.”
Trudeau also said the province needs to do more to encourage preventative medicine and keep people healthier, easing the burden on the system over the long term.
“They ought to have the things that help them to be healthy.”
PC candidate Doug Horner said the province plans to expand a rural clerkship program and use universities outside of the major centres to help train more doctors.
He said the province would have to train more doctors and bring more from around the world to keep up with the demand of a growing population.
“We have to train as many as we can at home, but we are growing by 100,000 people a year so we are going to attract them as well.”
Horner also touted his party’s plan for family care clinics, facilities staffed with nurses, pharmacists, and other health professionals designed to be open during the evening and weekends.
He said health professionals other than doctors, aren’t being used to their full potential.
“A registered nurse today is trained to 70 per cent of the scope of a family physician, but we don’t use them that way.”
Wildrose candidate Travis Hughes said the province has primary care networks and need not re-invent the wheel with the Tories’ proposed family care clinics.
“Why don’t we focus on something that we already have instead of inventing something else?”
He said the province needs to look closely at how to bring more doctors here and how to train more as well. He said without family doctors the rest of the system becomes burdened.
“People end up going to clinics or emergency rooms and that doesn’t help.”
Horner contends primary care networks are doing well, but they could be doing a better job involving other health workers.
“This is basically the evolution of a primary care network,” he said. “This is a team approach versus a doctor-controlled approach, but the doctor is still very much involved and very critical.”
