With St. Albert suffering from a serious shortage of family doctors, Mayor Nolan Crouse wants to strike a committee to formulate an attraction strategy.
“I don’t know what we can do, but I’m not going to just go away and do nothing,” Crouse said in an interview.
The mayor gave notice at council’s Monday meeting that he will soon bring forward a motion asking administration to form a committee of community members, elected representatives and administrative staff to form a strategy to attract more family doctors to St. Albert.
The motion will come up for a council vote at an upcoming meeting and Crouse is hoping to have a plan in place by Oct. 4.
The Alberta Medical Association estimates that the province is short 1,500 family doctors. Crouse said he’s been hearing more and more about the issue from local residents.
Although he doesn’t have detailed ideas on how to address the problem, he would like the city to investigate how a $25-million medical complex came to be built in Spruce Grove, while St. Albert has nothing that compares.
“Why can they do it and we can’t? What is it that they did that we didn’t do?” Crouse said.
That Spruce Grove complex houses a broad range of health-related services, including a medical clinic, several specialists, lab and X-ray services, a foot clinic, physiotherapy and Rexall drug store.
Completed in 2008, the project was spearheaded by Dr. Salim Somani, a Spruce Grove doctor who recruited a group of 10 doctor investors. Somani is the type of person Crouse would like to see in St. Albert.
“I’m interested in, not recruiting doctors as a strategy, but recruiting businesses that have doctors as leaders and doctors who own the businesses and perhaps a clinic of that magnitude,” he said.
The Spruce Grove complex sits on land that was a surplus school site that the city bought then sold at cost to the doctor group, said Mayor Stuart Houston. Part of the agreement was that the development include seniors housing, so the doctors sold a portion of the land to a developer, who built a complex for 55-plus residents.
The Spruce Grove clinic has seen a four-fold increase in the number of visits from St. Albert residents in the last four years. One of those is John Smith, who makes the drive because he can’t find a doctor in St. Albert.
Smith has been pressing the mayor and city councillors to do something about the shortage. He’s even gone so far as to talk to doctors himself about relocating to St. Albert.
“I’m sure we can attract doctors to St. Albert. I don’t know that the lifestyle in Spruce Grove or Westlock is any better than it is here but I’m sure the facilities are much better in these places,” Smith said.
“We certainly need more medical facilities. How are we going to do it? I don’t know.”
Crouse has said the city must do something but he doesn’t want to open the public purse.
“I don’t know that we’re going to throw government money at it, but we can throw a government plan behind it,” he said.
