A west-central Alberta community has declared a local health crisis in an effort to boost dwindling numbers of family doctors.
Hinton Mayor Nicholas Nissen told CTV News Edmonton on Friday that his city of 10,000 people has lost about half of its primary care physicians to retirement in the past year, leaving “half of our town” without a primary care physician.
There are currently six family physicians working in Hinton, but not all of them are full-time. Nissen said before the COVID-19 pandemic began, there were 15 doctors working full-time in the town, 270 kilometres west of Edmonton.
Nissen said the town council learned in late April that Hinton was “in danger of losing (its) medical clinic” due to a shortage of doctors, who, unlike many urban physicians, also work at local hospitals and other facilities outside of primary care clinics.
“We've hit a demographic cliff,” Nissen said.
“The number of physicians has become a little skewed, which has led to a situation where we're losing access to primary care. When you lose access to primary care in this country, you lose a lot of access to the health system, because your family doctor is the entry point.”
The charity will temporarily take over running the town's primary care clinic.
According to minutes from a Hinton City Council meeting held Tuesday, the Hinton Healthcare Foundation has requested $500,000 per year for the next two years “to help stabilize primary health care and attract and retain primary health care providers in the community” following the city's formal declaration of a state of emergency this week.
“We're sounding the alarm saying, 'We need help. This is no longer business as usual,'” Nissen said.
“We are in a health care crisis. Over the past year, more than half of our community has lost access to health care. To me, that's the definition of a crisis.”
The declaration doesn't give the Hinton Town Council any additional powers, but instead Nissen hopes it will garner attention and support from the state.
Alberta Health Minister Adriana LaGrange said in a statement that the province is working to address rural health issues.
“This includes expanding medical training opportunities in rural areas, revising our physician remuneration model to incentivize the best and brightest to become physicians in Alberta, and expanding the scope of government-paid nurse practitioners to provide primary care,” LaGrange said in a statement.
The minister said he has recruited one doctor for the town and is working to recruit five more.
