PCS PERSCRIBES SOLUTIONS FOR BETTER RURAL HEALTH CARE.

PC leader says province has failed to retain doctors, medical staff in rural regions

PC leader James Aylward said the health care system in rural P.E.I. is broken but he has a number of suggestions that he believes can help fix it. Aylward, speaking to media on Wednesday at an election campaign-style event in Tyne Valley, outlined a “five-point plan” aimed at improving the delivery of health care in rural parts of the Island. Aylward said a lack of trained health-care professionals in rural regions has affected the entire health-care system on P.E.I. “Our services in rural P.E.I. have been eroded to the point where the main referral hospitals in Charlottetown and Summerside are over-crowded and have been pushed to the brink,” Aylward said, flanked by the entire PC caucus. The PC plan calls for re-establishing regional health boards, which were dismantled in 2008 in favour of the central Health P.E.I. board. The plan also calls for improving recruitment and retention efforts on the Island, potentially bringing private sector recruiters and municipalities into the process. An electronic health record system would be established, as well as a “collaborative care model” that would allow an expanded scope of practice for health-care staff such as pharmacists, nurses and nurse practitioners. Although Aylward acknowledged that recruitment of healthcare staff is a difficult process, he said the province has the ability to retain more trained health-care staff. “There hasn’t been a concerted effort focused on retention. Right now, we don’t really have a formal process of exit interviews to find out why health-care professionals are leaving P.E.I.,” Aylward said. Hilton MacLennan, the PC candidate in Tyne Valley-Sherbrooke, said the region has had difficulties in retaining family doctors. “The health-care situation out here is really on everybody’s mind. We’ve lost so much. We’ve put so much pressure on Prince County (Hospital), there’s long waiting hours there,” MacLennan said. “They announce we have a doctor, and then none shows. Everybody’s kind of getting frustrated with the whole thing.” MacLennan said the family doctor currently serving Tyne Valley has been splitting his time between family practice and maintaining services at the Western Hospital in Alberton. The area has not been able to fully replace a family doctor, Dr. Ihab Abdelmalek, who left his local practice in 2016. Aylward said the re-establishment of regional health boards would provide solutions to some of the challenges facing rural regions. “At the end of the day, what it would do is put government back in the hands of the people,” Aylward said. “We had regional health boards that worked very hard to not only build hospitals, to build health facilities, to help recruit physicians, to fundraise for equipment.” In May, every member of the current board of Health P.E.I. stepped down over concerns with a new governance model announced by the provincial government. Trustees said the new governance model could allow politics to influence decisions in health care. The province has since named a single trustee, Jim Revell, to serve in an interim capacity until a new board can be named.