The Sundre and District Health Professional Attraction Committee is requesting more volunteers to help with ongoing physician recruitment challenges and to take the time to ensure new arriving doctors and their families feel welcome.
The committee is also requesting a building for all the Alberta Health Services (AHS) professionals to work, due to a lack of workspace in the Sundre Hospital and Care Centre and the Greenwood Family Physicians Clinic.
As well, the committee is asking the Town of Sundre and Mountain View County to share an $18,000 housing grant for each physician recruited to the community.
The committee consists of volunteers from around the community, and was formed in 2011 to help with attracting doctors to Sundre.
Dr. Hal Irvine and Gerald Ingeveld, members of the committee, presented requests to the community at an open house held by the committee on Nov. 22 at Country Road RV.
“I've heard that there could be between 20,000 and 40,000 people show up in our community going west, and there is no hospital between here and the mountains,” said Ingeveld, chairman of the committee. “People try to burn themselves in campfires and roll their quads over themselves and it gets really busy in the emergency room so maybe 10 (doctors) might not do it.”
He said there are still more doctors needed in Sundre.
“It takes about one and a half young graduates to replace one retiring doctor. That's kind of a rule of thumb.”
Irvine said they sponsored six site visits where they brought doctors to Sundre to show them around the community and only one ended up deciding to go elsewhere.
He said Sundre is fortunate to have nine new doctors coming by September 2013 because other communities are making lucrative offers, such as $50,000 to $65,000 signing bonuses.
Open house guests were told Sundre is offering $18,000 as a “recruitment bonus” for each new potential doctor, as well as rent coverage or mortgage payments for one year or a down payment on a reasonable house located in Sundre – if they agree to stay for at least three years.
“We came under the impression that initially we were going to be offered an incentive to come here which we didn't receive,” said Dr. Mark Wiley, who started at the clinic in August.
“We took such a huge loss to sell our house to come here and buy a house, and my wife of course lost her full-time teaching job because there are no teaching jobs in Sundre.”
Coming from Medicine Hat are Wiley, his wife Wendy and their three daughters - Megg, 14, and twin 12-year-olds Morgan and Mackenzie. The family resided in Medicine Hat for 15 years.
“We really like the area, the hospital is wonderful, and the staff and the other physicians here are really nice.”
Wiley said he is happy with the decision of moving to Sundre but said the original picture that was portrayed to him was that physicians weren't working too often. He said this isn't the case because he doesn't get much time off.
“The commitment is pretty severe and it's one of the busiest emergency rooms I've worked in in the province, and I've worked in many.”
Darlene Kapiczowski, a member of the committee, said keeping Sundre's health-care system active is the best thing for the community.
“I don't think there's anything more important for sustaining the community than a good health-care system and having doctors and a hospital here. If we lose that why would anybody want to work in Sundre,” said Kapiczowski.
