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KENTVILLE, N.S. —

Kentville town council has voted against funding a part-time term position to augment efforts to recruit and retain more family doctors for the Annapolis Valley.

Council received a letter about the Medical Resident Retention Program for the Annapolis Valley (MRRP) from Kings South MLA Keith Irving at the December council advisory committee session.

Mayor Sandra Snow said the matter was discussed and council determined the town did not have staff available to support the initiative. She said this was communicated to the group promoting the program through the chief administrative officer.

Coun. Cate Savage, a member of the Annapolis Valley Collaborative, the committee behind the initiative, brought a request for a decision on funding for a term position for the MRRP to Kentville town council on Jan. 27.

Savage said she got involved with the committee behind the effort, the Annapolis Valley Collaborative, when she served as deputy mayor.

Although the funding proposal document didn’t make it into the council agenda package, Savage described the initiative as a way to address doctor shortages by establishing the Valley as a welcoming community for medical residents so they can attract and retain more.

“There are some constituents that are in desperate need for a family doctor,” Savage said. “In fact, the western zone remains the area with the biggest challenge.”

She said that, according to the Nova Scotia Health Authority (NSHA), the number of patients in the western zone without a family doctor has increased from 11,680 to 21,159 from January 2018 to December 2019. Over the past 14 months in Kings County, which is part of the western zone, “the numbers have been flat at 4,271 to 4,278.”

She said that although there are two or three new family physicians moving to the area in the coming year, others are retiring, so the collaborative members don’t believe the challenge has been met.

Savage said the program is being supported by the Annapolis Valley Chamber of Commerce (AVCC), the County of Kings, Town of Wolfville, Town of Berwick, local Rotary Clubs and the Valley Regional Enterprise Network (REN). The group has also applied for a grant through the provincial Communities, Culture and Heritage Cultural Innovation Fund, although this money can’t be used to fund the term position.

She moved for council to approve $4,000 in support of a one-year term project co-ordinator position for someone to work in conjunction with the western zone recruitment officers on behalf of the Annapolis Valley. The motion was defeated in a tie vote.

Coun. Cathy Maxwell said health care is very important to her but it’s a provincial responsibility that she doesn’t like seeing downloaded onto municipalities.

Coun. Lynn Pulsifer said she feels that the Town of Kentville should join the collaborative community effort to recruit physicians and thinks that council would be remiss not to do so.

Snow said there is a program where six medical resident family doctors in training from Dalhousie University come to the Valley for a two-year term, with two going to Annapolis Royal, two to Berwick and two to Kentville. She said 26 of the last 28 residents who went through the program have remained in Nova Scotia, although not all in the Valley.

Snow said there are two recruiters in the NSHA western zone and doctors are now free to go wherever there are openings, so those doctors who want to be in the Valley are coming here.

She said there is one family doctor for every 811 people in Nova Scotia, so the problem is the geographic distribution of family doctors more so than the number. She also recognized that there are doctors who are retiring, creating shortages in certain areas, such as Middleton.

“There are issues, but we don’t have a problem attracting family doctors to this area,” Snow said.

She said there isn’t a “well flushed-out plan” for how the person hired for the MRRP would be employed, who they are going to work for and what exactly they would do.

The MRRP project co-ordinator would be a one-year, part-time term position at a cost of $9,900. The budget for the total MRRP project is $35,000, with $20,000 coming from the Cultural Innovation Fund; $10,000 from community donations (which includes municipal, service club, business and partner contributions) and $5,000 in regional marketing and administrative support from the Valley REN and AVCC.

“For me, that’s not enough information about how the money of our taxpayers is going to be used to push this forward,” Snow said.

She said a person working one day a week really couldn’t make “a grand contribution” to the doctor recruitment effort.

Kirk.starratt@kingscountynews.ca

BY THE NUMBERS

In the Nova Scotia Health Authority’s western zone, which includes the Annapolis Valley, there were 21,044 patients on a provincial waiting list for people without a family doctor or nurse practitioner as of Jan. 1.

This is down 0.5 per cent from 21,159 on Dec. 1, 2019.

Across Nova Scotia, 46,991 patients had yet to be placed as of Jan. 1.

This is down 3.7 per cent from 48,790 on Dec. 1, 2019.

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