By Kevin Gilby
CRAIK—Minister of Rural and Remote Health Greg Ottenbreit made an impromptu stop at the health centres in Davidson and Craik, Tuesday, Jan. 27.
“On our way through, we stopped in, and had an impromptu tour of the Craik facility, and ended up speaking with the doctor there, we got a little bit of a tour from his perspective,” Ottenbreit said. “I’ve had a few different invitations, many via email, to come out and look at the [Craik] facility.”
RM of Craik Reeve Hilton Spencer happened to be in the health centre at the time and was “very happy to see him there.”
After his stop in Craik, Ottenbreit then stopped in Davidson and touched base with Dr. Lang. He toured their facilities “so we can have a first hand perspective on what the facilities are like.”
Ottenbreit said, “They are both great little facilities serving the areas for a long time in a really good fashion. I was glad I looked at both so you can really see what their residents were telling us.”
During his visits with the physicians, he to listened to some of their concerns about the proposed three-physician group practice as well as possible concerns over contractual matters.
Subsequent to the visits, the doctors accepted an invitation to speak further about their concerns in the Health Ministry offices in Regina the following day. Ottenbreit said the dialogue was productive and believes that “it’s progressing fairly positively at this point.”
One of the issues Ottenbreit wanted to impress upon the doctors was the benefits of working in a group practice. In particular, he said based on experiences from other group environments, physicians find it beneficial to have someone contractually being able to support them for holidays, sick leaves, training, or any other need that may arise.
Ottenbreit said that Dr. Karam may have felt that the work on establishing a contract was being held up but he assured him that any delay was due to it being “such a moving target.” Furthermore, a draft contract was written on Jan. 23 and forwarded to Dr. Karam for his consideration.
According to Ottenbreit, the draft is a three party contract between the physician, the Five Hills Health Region (FHHR), and the Heartland Health Region (HHR). Under the contract, Dr. Karam would be providing his regular office hours in Craik Health Centre four days a week as well as providing some on-call coverage for emergency and acute care in the Davidson Health Centre.
Previously, FHHR was proposing Dr. Karam sign a contract with the HHR whereupon his services would be ‘hired’ back to the community of Craik. “Because of the division between regions,” Ottenbreit said, “Legally, it was hard to contract it like Five Hills initially wanted.”
To read more, please see the Feb. 2, 2015 print edition of The Davidson Leader.