BOYLE – The Boyle Healthcare Centre is not in danger of closing and Alberta Health Services (AHS) is committed to resuming regular operation at the facility as soon as possible, says Village of Boyle mayor Colin Derko in advance of the upcoming Feb. 8 meeting with healthcare officials.
The meeting, slated to start at 7 p.m. at the Boyle Community Centre, will focus on the actions that AHS plans to take to resume regular services for the surrounding communities. Derko believes that there may be a few hundred people in attendance, due to the regional nature of the hospital.
“It’s called the Boyle hospital, but it’s clearly a regional hospital, and it’s important to people from a long way away," Derko said.
Throughout the months of reduced hours that occured throughout 2022, councilors from the Village of Boyle and Athabasca County have been in discussions with AHS officials as they seek to find a resolution. Derko noted that “they’ve [AHS] been really good to us, basically, they’ll do anything we ask” regarding the planning for the meeting.
Before the meeting, he said they were open, transparent, and willing to take whatever steps they could to accommodate the community leadership in the pursuit of a solution.
Despite this openness, Derko did say that “they [AHS] just weren’t giving me the answer I wanted. In their defence, they might have not had those answers, but, in my defense, go get them.”
Now that he believes AHS has these answers and hopes it will be a productive and fruitful meeting.
As of Feb. 2, the format for the meeting has not been decided, with meetings ongoing between the parties. While he doesn’t know exactly who from AHS will be attending, Derko does believe that they will have the answers to questions that the local councils have been unable to answer.
AHS made it clear to the mayor from the beginning that they did not have plans to close the hospital down, contrary to some of the rumours that had spread. Instead, Derko’s question to them was “what are you doing to keep it open?” He went on to elaborate on the difference saying that his fear was “it would become something they couldn’t control and would be forced to shut it down.”
According to him, AHS never shared this worry; the constant nature of the closures didn’t always reflect the number of staff available. There were certain nights where there were enough nurses to staff both Athabasca and Boyle, but due to a lack of consistency, and to avoid confusion within the community, AHS felt that the proper decision was to suspend service.
