The province is working on a number of things to improve health care in rural areas.
Martin Long, the parliamentary secretary for rural health, says this includes more for improving rural health facilities and improving access to those facilities as well.
“We have the same distance from our rural communities into places like Edmonton and Calgary as they have for the distance between Edmonton and Calgary and rural Alberta. We do need to structure our healthcare in a way that understands that the highways go both ways. If you’re going to put patients from rural communities into those bigger centres, surely we help offload those bigger centres into our rural communities.”
Long says the proper maintaining of rural facilities can help in bringing more doctors to rural areas.
Another part of their strategy is on recruiting and training doctors in rural areas.
“We’ve actually partnered with Northwestern Polytechnic out of Grande Prairie. They’re going to be training physicians. For people who actually know what it’s like to live and work and play in rural communities, it’s a lot better chance to retain them in those communities if we can train them. Too many times, our students are going into major urban centres for their university training and then never returning.”
The first graduates from that program at Northwest Polytechnic are expected to be within the next year.
You can listen to the full interview below.
– Kyle Moore, Trending 55 Newsroom
