BOYLE – The Boyle Healthcare Centre will officially enter another month of temporary night closures in October, and the Village of Boyle, Athabasca County and the Town of Athabasca are putting on a full court press to make sure everyone knows about it.
The village is now joining the other two municipalities to continue to lobby the UCP government regarding not only the ongoing Athabasca University situation but the healthcare situation, particularly at the Boyle Healthcare Centre, but around the region as well.
Since July, the Boyle facility has been closed every night with hours of operation from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. This has also meant the closure of its 15 acute care beds for those months.
Village council approved a motion at the end of a special Sept. 12 in-camera meeting to contribute $7,500 “in support of the regional lobbyist” to help retain the services of public affairs company Canadian Strategy Group, which has been working with the Keep Athabasca in Athabasca University advocacy group to help the powers-that-be to better understand their perspective on the importance of having AU jobs based in the Athabasca area.
“We were in with just the AU idea, but as we talk regionally it just seemed to make sense to us … The long and short of it is that it's a regional effort,” said Boyle mayor Colin Derko in a Sept. 24 interview. “If anything is lost in the region, if they lose a restaurant in Athabasca, or in the county, that hurts us all. If you like to go out to dinner now you’ve got one less place to go.”
Derko cited the closure of the Millar Western lumber mill in Boyle in 2016 as a lesson that communities need to stick together as a region for their collective benefit. Now with a questionable future, lobbying the government to make sure the Boyle Healthcare Centre continues to serve the region is a no-brainer.
“Hindsight is 20/20 but maybe we could have done more if we were in a group,” he said, adding that closure was a giant economic hit to the tax base of the entire region.
The town and county have previously approved $15,000 each for the services of CSG, on two previous occasions, and have recently done the same for a third time. Private citizens have also contributed thousands to the cause.
See more on the recent town and county decisions on page 10.
Not only that, a peek at the village’s Sept. 28 agenda package letters to local organizations and neighbouring communities about the ongoing closure, asking for their support as the three municipalities within the boundaries of Athabasca County go forward. Council will discuss sending letters to Lac La Biche County, Buffalo Lake Métis Settlement, and Portage College seeking their support in the healthcare lobby effort.
“I am writing this letter to you to ensure you are aware of the situation regarding the Boyle Healthcare Centre and to ask for your support and assistance in lobbying AHS and the Alberta government to address the hospitals staffing issues and keeping the hospital operating in service to our communities,” begins the letter signed by Derko.
To note, Lac La Biche’s William J. Cadzow Healthcare Centre has been experiencing its own service disruptions for months and is currently operating at 65 per cent acute care capacity. Obstetrics services are also on hold indefinitely.
A letter with similar verbiage will also go to Minister of Health Jason Copping, upon council approval, as well as letters to UCP leadership candidates Rebecca Schulz, Danielle Smith and Travis Toews, thanking them for their recent visits to the region and hearing the concerns of residents and local officials.
“We all understand the challenges that our province is faced with regarding health care, but as of right now Boyle has a very real risk of being closed with no service on November 1 because of a nurse shortage,” the letters to the leadership candidates and health minister go on to say. “To our knowledge, there is no plan past October 31, and this is simply not acceptable.”
Currently, the facility requires a registered nurse (RN) along with two licensed practical nurses (LPNs) to always be on shift. AHS is looking to fill four RN positions and three LPN positions in Boyle, according to the letters on council’s agenda.
Derko and the rest of council got a jump on the lobby effort themselves at last week’s Alberta Municipalities fall conference in Calgary having face-to-face discussions with Minister Copping and other officials.
“In the past week, I’ve talked with, in one shape or another, I’ve talked to candidates that are running (for the UCP leadership). I was able to get some time with Rebecca Schulz and Travis Toews; I was able to talk to the minister (of health), and I was also able to talk to (associate) minister of natural gas (Dale) Nally, who is also on the Treasury Board,” he said in an interview Sept. 24, adding he has also been in close contact with AHS North Zone officials that are very invested in resolving the Boyle healthcare situation.
One of the recommended remedies in the letters to be brought to the minister involves making it possible for LPNs to manage facilities in the absence of an RN on shift, which is currently against AHS regulations. Locums, the letter notes, are also free to decide where they want to work.
As of Sept. 23, 19 of the 35 AHS facilities in the North Zone, which essentially covers the northern half of the province, were experiencing temporary bed reductions and/or service disruptions almost exclusively because of temporary staff shortages due to illness, leave, vacation, or vacancies. Three of those facilities are in MLA Glenn van Dijken’s Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock constituency, and one more only returned to regular hours weeks ago.
Besides Boyle, the Barrhead Healthcare Centre emergency department has been closed intermittently for months due to a lack of on-site physician coverage, and just last week it was announced obstetric services would be paused at the Westlock Healthcare Centre through October, see more on that on page 3.
In an interview Sept. 23, van Dijken said that because of staffing issues throughout the province, locum nurses that would usually cover those shifts in Boyle are elsewhere.
“The locums have taken up slack in other locations and so it's been difficult to get them out into Boyle and other places as well,” he said, adding that while much of the attention tends to be focused on the shortage of doctors, this summer, the lack of nurses also become far more apparent.
“One thing I can say is that AHS committed that there is no plan to close the hospital or anything to close the hospital and they’re working very hard to ensure that they’re able to keep it open during the day and they are looking at a couple options on how to open up inpatient beds again”
van Dijken added he is “working hard to help the minister and the rest of the government understand how critical having these services in rural Alberta is to ensure that we have all the workers we need for the industry that we have out here, and without the industry that's out in the rural, nothing happens in this province.”
The Boyle hospital serves a good portion of the Athabasca region and is very important, said Athabasca mayor Rob Balay during his monthly Town Talk: Live interview with the Advocate Sept. 15.
“We're working hand in hand with mayor Derko to make sure to do everything that we can to make sure that it stays open and I’m confident that we'll find a way to make it happen,” he said. “We're actually lobbying not just our MLA, but the minister because we don't want that hospital to close, so we're going to do everything we can to make sure that that doesn't happen because sometimes once you get a closure, it's really hard to get things going again, so we're going to make sure that doesn't happen.”
The recently formed Regional Health Care Attraction and Retention Committee (RHCARC), which includes elected officials from the Village of Boyle, Town of Athabasca and Athabasca County along with local doctors and administrators, and members of the public, has seen some success in helping to bring two doctors and their families to Athabasca specifically — one is already here, while another is expected in weeks.
The hope is some of that success will spill over to the nursing side as well and help rectify the problem with closures in Boyle before it’s too late.
“If we don't put every effort forward right now, we will be sorry, just like we were with the mill,” said Derko.
