City council striving for enhanced doctor recruitment

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on May 11, 2022.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

City council has accepted a recommendation from its Cultural and Social Standing Policy Committee to continue exploring collaboration options to bring more doctors to Lethbridge.
Those collaborations would be with Alberta Health Services and the Chinook Primary Care Network (CPCN).
At an April meeting, the committee was told recruitment efforts are successfully bringing as many as 11 physicians to Lethbridge.
Councillor Jenn Schmidt-Rempel told council on Tuesday that three signed letters of offers have been made to physicians, seven others are pending and there is one pending site visit in May.
If everything moves forward, she said all the doctors would be practising in this calendar year.
“So that’s some good news,’ the councillor said.
Council on Tuesday also accepted a recommendation to write a letter to Health Minister Jason Copping advocating for funding and support for an academic teaching clinic in the city and to allocate $15,000 from council contingencies to a marketing and recruitment campaign to be done in partnership with the CPCN and AHS.
Dr. Michael Auld, medical director of AHS South Zone gave the SPC a detailed report into efforts to recruit more family doctors for Lethbridge where as many as 40,000 people no longer have a personal physician.

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