OLDS — A request that a health-care professionals attraction and retention committee be formed again is expected to come back to town council next month.
The matter arose during Olds council’s May 9 meeting when council received a letter from the Olds Institute’s Community Lifestyles Committee (CLC).
“There is a shortage of health-care professionals. To meet the growing health-care needs of the community, it is imperative to have a sustainable and holistic health-care system," CLC co-chairs Bernice Lynn and Rita Thompson wrote.
“The Community Lifestyles Committee recommends that the Olds Secretariat form such a committee and that such a committee be represented by members of the community at large.”
Coun. Heather Ryan recommended that that idea be raised during council’s service level review discussions later this year.
Interim CAO Sheena Linderman said that could be done, but suggested that first, council should discuss the matter with its physician resource planner during council’s policies and priorities meeting, slated to be held June 7.
Council voted to receive the committee’s letter as information.
In their letter, Lynn and Thompson noted that a representative of the Rural Health Professions Action Plan gave a presentation to town council.
During that presentation, made in February 2020, Rural Health Professions Action Plan director Rebekah Seidel offered to help Olds revive a committee to attract physicians and other health professionals to the community if town officials wished to do so.
Mitch Thomson, a town councillor at the time and former executive director of the Olds Institute, confirmed the Olds Physician Retention & Attraction Committee has been dormant since 2017.
He said that decision was made because the community was deemed by the province to no longer have the urgent need for health-care professionals that other rural communities had.
“If it gets to the point where we need to fire up that committee again we’ll certainly reach out to you,” then-mayor Michael Muzychka said as he thanked Seidel for her presentation.
He described Rural Health Professions Action Plan as “a fantastic resource” for the province.
Reached by email, Thompson said she and Lynn are aware the matter has now been slated for the June council meeting.
"It is a step to ensuring there is a more holistic approach to health care for our community and the region," Thompson wrote.
