Rural doctor plan focus of commitee

ALBERTA MEDICAL ASSOCIATION CHIEF SAYS COMMITTEE WORKING ON PLAN

The new president of the Alberta Medical Association is a footballloving pediatrician and sports medicine doctor who says the province needs to recruit more physicians to work in a rural areas and a new health information system to help caregivers treat their patients.

Dr. Neil Cooper said these are some of the biggest challenges the province must tackle to improve the health-care system. But he said the association and the NDP government are working more closely together than they did under the Tories.

“What we didn’t have in the past and what we have now is a way better relationship with the government. We are all talking the same language and we are meeting together regularly,” Cooper said Monday from his Calgary practice.

“We are going to get a whole lot more done.”

Cooper said a committee is already working on how to ensure that rural and remote areas of the province have enough physicians.

Alberta Health says the number of physicians dramatically outpaced the province’s population growth in recent years. At the same time, the number of doctors practising outside of cities decreased.

Cooper said the committee, which includes physicians, is working to nail down details of the shortage and come up with ways to recruit doctors to serve rural areas.

“You send a doctor to a small town and they are the only one there, they don’t last very long because it is so hard,” he said. “We have to come up with a way to support people going into smaller places.”

Cooper said the key to a more efficient health system is better information.