Right in the centre - Worth the cost

Details

Published on Thursday, June 18, 2015

By Ken Waddell

The Neepawa Banner

The most recent issue of the Minnedosa Tribune carried a very encouraging front page story.The Minnedosa Tribune is by the way the oldest community newspaper in Western Canada and is privately owned by Darryl Holyk. Privately owned papers are the best kind as I have stated many times and the Tribune is no exception.The Trib’s front page story outlines extensive plans for a new medical clinic in Minnedosa. It’s long overdue. Just as the renovated and then expanded medical clinic in Neepawa was long overdue, the community owned clinic in Minnedosa has been “talked about” for a long time. 

In the olden days, back in the 1950s and ‘60s, doctors got together and built and owned their own clinics. The system worked well for a long time. Medical doctors might, along with dentists and optometrists, pool their resources and build a clinic. That happened in both Neepawa and Minnedosa. The idea was that when a doctor retired, they might be able to sell their practise. That system is long gone. 

Today’s doctors aren’t particularly interested in owning bricks and mortar. They want to practise medicine and not be burdened with the load of care attached to a building. The younger doctors have looked at what happened to their predecessors and they quite frankly, want less time on the wards, in the clinic and on-call than those who went before them. And who can blame them. We are well aware of doctors who worked through every weekend, every blizzard, every music recital and every one of their kids ball games to end up at the end of their career not really knowing their kids and having missed almost every aspect of the child’s development. Many doctors worked so hard and immersed themselves so deeply in their practises that there was untold stress on families and marriages. That may be just the way it was but it isn’t how things are today and I say that’s a good thing.

The way to go is to have a community clinic where each medical professional pays rent. The clinic’s development and maintenance is in the hands of the community, where it should be.

The Neepawa model has been pretty successful. It’s fashioned after the Winkler community clinic model. In the 1990s, Winkler had dwindled to five doctors. Now, with the community owned clinic, I am told they have over 30 doctors. Neepawa’s doctors numbers had dropped dangerously low but has now come back with five at the clinic, one at an independent clinic and one more doctor scheduled to start at Neepawa early in September. The Neepawa clinic also has  the services of two optometrists.

The Neepawa model has worked fairly well due to dogged determination by the local doctors, local fundraising for the clinic, mainly in the form of an annual lottery and with solid support from all the municipalities through the Neepawa and Area Development Corporation.

Minnedosa’s plans for a community clinic are definitely headed in the right direction. They need to make sure their clinic is both large enough and expandable. The Neepawa Clinic needs to expand, either on the current site or on an entirely new site so there could be many more medical professionals and health care providers to serve a Neepawa population that is expanding in numbers in all age ranges from newborn to the elderly. 

And that leads back to where every discussion leads. Money! Neepawa funded the clinic, as stated above with municipal money through NADCO and with local fundraising. The renovations and the expansion are now paid off. The initial purchase is still on the books for each municipality and that’s where it should stay. Perhaps Minnedosa’s surrounding municipalities can do the same thing. Perhaps they can do a local fundraiser but that needs a dedicated core of people to draw the community together. Or perhaps they can luck out like Swan River did and get the province, through Prairie Mountain Health to fork over a couple of million dollars to build a clinic. The Swan River funding is hardly fair as Neepawa didn’t get a dime out of PMH but if Minnedosa can convince PMH to come up with some money, I guess good on them. There is a downside though. As soon as the PMH gets involved, they will call the shots and that’s not a good thing. The RHAs in Manitoba have not been community friendly as services and resources get cut back until the viability of the various facilities is in big trouble. 

Both Neepawa and Minnedosa deserve to have well run clinics and other, viable health care facilities. It is increasingly apparent if that is to happen, then both Minnedosa and Neepawa have to keep control and assume even  more control. There’s a cost to that but the long term viability of the two towns depends on it. It’s worth the cost.