Manitoba Votes 2016 - Service erosion

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Published on Thursday, March 31, 2016

By Banner Staff

The Neepawa Banner

Question: Many rural voters are concerned about doctor shortages and service erosion. What do you think needs to be done in the short term (1 to 2 years) and long term (over 2 years) to address these issues?

Name: Damian Dempsey

Home: Arden

Party: Independent

Answer: The shortage of doctors is a serious problem in this area and a priority issue for me. We have seen the downgrading of services, such as the removal of emergency care from Gladstone and McCreary hospitals.   Getting a doctor now proves difficult for many residents of this area and wait times for getting an appointment can be long. 

I was confronted by the reality of the doctor shortage when my son was diagnosed with kidney failure and put on dialysis. I could not be considered as a kidney donor until I had a family doctor, but I had been without one from the time Dr. White moved from this area and was not able to obtain one. Eventually, I was able to get a doctor, first at Carberry, and then in Neepawa.

Neepawa has had some success in recruiting doctors, with seven currently located in town. The people who have been involved in this initiative should be applauded, but with the growing population of Neepawa and its large catchment area, we still need more doctors. 

In the short term, the doctor shortage should be addressed by establishing a provincial doctor recruitment and retention team that would work with local doctor recruitment and retention committees and specialist recruitment companies to aggressively recruit qualified doctors in Canada and from overseas. The town of Killarney has successfully tried this approach.  Fast-tracking and streamlining the applications of suitably qualified overseas physicians who apply to practice here is also necessary so that they can start serving the needs of Manitobans sooner.  Greater recruitment and use of nurse practitioners would also take some pressure off doctors and facilitate more effective use of the time they spend with patients.

In the longer term, more doctors need to be trained here in Manitoba from the local population. Doctors with local ties are more likely to stay and practice here. The young people in this area are intelligent and imbued with the rural values of hard work, initiative and compassion, and our educators have a role to play in promoting medicine as a career. In addition, our area needs to make a better case for itself in advertising to physicians. Promoting the affordable quality housing, available recreation facilities, friendly small towns and good schools that make this constituency appealing would help attract doctors.

Neepawa hospital has maintained its services and still offers obstetrics and some limited surgery, but this small facility is coming to the end of its useful life. A replacement small hospital with few services would be a waste of money and would not be an incentive for doctors to locate here. 

The answer is a large regional hospital situated in Neepawa, utilizing existing infrastructure and serving a large catchment area. It would be able to offer more services, such as CT scans and perhaps include dialysis services. This would be an excellent incentive in attracting doctors and other professional staff. A large regional hospital at Neepawa with more doctors would also make the availability of on-call doctors more manageable,and result in less doctor burnout.

If elected MLA for Agassiz, I would advocate for a large regional hospital located in Neepawa.

Name: Eileen Clarke

Home: Gladstone

Party: Progressive Conservative

Answer: Residents throughout Manitoba, more so in rural and northern Manitoba, have been worried for years about the lack of access to a family doctor and retaining them, ensuring their care can remain continuous.  This creates anxiety for our residents and especially seniors who do not always have the ability to travel  to another clinic to see a physician. 

I’m especially concerned when I’m told by seniors that after receiving medical care in the same clinic all their lives, that they have now been told they have to go elsewhere. They no longer have access to health care at that location because the municipality they reside in does not financially contribute to that particular RHA for costs of medical clinics and long term care facilities.  There are two RHAs that provide services to our residents but I was not aware that there were borders or conditions as to who can use specific doctors or clinics.  Manitoba Healthcare is a provincial service and I am appalled that anyone would be treated in this manner.  The same applies to our Ambulance/Paramedic Service.  Recently, a senior requiring ambulance service was refused because he asked to be taken to the hospital where he has been treated many times and the one that had his medical history. This hospital was in his RHA and not the one that the ambulance had been dispatched from.  The choice he was given was to go to the hospital where the paramedics were dispatched from or they would not be transporting him at all. This was not the decision of the paramedics, they were complying with policy of their RHA.   Both of these incidents concern me a great deal and are clear indications that our health care system has different rules in different RHA’s. This is not acceptable.  Who is making these decisions?  Our health care system is clearly in need of review. 

The Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba commits to and I support:

• Establish an improved doctor recruitment and retention program with a goal to have the most improved retention rates in our first term

• Create a more collaborative recruitment environment that focuses on a team based approach

• Hire experts in effective recruitment processes including foreign recruitment of practice-ready doctors

• Promote hometown doctors through education in local communities

• Conduct exit reviews with departing doctors to determine reasons for leaving

• Review the levels of incentives offered within the province and in other provinces and assess the impact of Manitoba’s higher tax environment

Based on reports from The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba, over 2,300 doctors have fled Manitoba since 1999 under the NDP.  According to the Canadian Institute of Health Information, Manitoba has the worst doctor retention rate in Canada.  We need to stop the revolving door and work collaboratively with all our stakeholders to develop a recruitment and retention plan that delivers results.

Answers from Green Party candidate Robert Smith and NDP candidate Courtney Lucas were not available by print deadline.