At their meeting on Monday, Sackville town council will consider whether to back a plan by a local group to engage in health care worker recruitment for the Sackville area.
The plan is being pitched by the Rural Health Action Group, a subcommittee of the Memramcook-Tantramar Task Force which was originally formed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but has since broadened its scope.
At a public meeting on September 20, council heard the plan as presented by former mayor and current member of the Rural Health Action Group, John Higham. At the time, Higham asked for a contribution from the town, in the range of $5000 to $15,000, to help seed a fund that would be managed by the Sackville Hospital Foundation, a charitable organization.
When town staff presented their proposed budget to council earlier this month, it included $10,000 to go towards the fund.
On September 20, Higham laid bare some of the problem, saying that in a province with 50% of people living in rural areas, only 8% of doctors live in those areas.
“There’s enough doctors per person, but they’re all basically in an urban areas,” said Higham, quoting a phrase he said he’s heard time and again: “If there’s a two tiered system in this country, it’s rural and urban.”
Higham told council that the Rural Health Action group has been meeting with both the province and the Horizon Health Network to try to tackle some of the issues, and that both have agreed communities becoming involved in recruitment is a good idea.
“They’re coming to the table, both the province and Horizon want to find ways to address some of these things,” said Higham. He referenced online consultations that took place earlier this year. “One of the things we said online was that you need to involve the communities. You need to involve community assets. You need to have a way in which the community can participate and make that job more attractive,” said Higham. “And [Horizon and the province have] agreed that that’s a good idea.”
Higham described a situation where Sackville is competing directly with neighbouring Amherst for health care workers. “Amherst has higher salary, higher overtime pay, better working conditions, certainty in careers. And they’re looking to poach people here, because they know the situation,” he said.
“Recruiting was possible, but it’s hard. And Horizon hasn’t done a good job. But they’re really interested in looking at specific targeted regions, and ways in which to get people to come here, including the possibility for financial incentives,” said Higham.
Higham said the Rural Health Action Group felt it was necessary to have a community based fund “to make up some of those gaps that we’re going to have.”
“If we recruit somebody, it’s hard to say, well, don’t go to Amherst. We’ll pay you less, you’ll have less uncertainty, and you’ll have less of a future… We’ve got to be able to match the financial, at best, in order to recruit people,” said Higham.
Higham told council the group has a pretty good agreement with Horizon on how community-based recruitment could work, but financial commitment from the community is needed.
“We know we can sell Sackville. We know you guys can sell Sackville,” Higham said. “But we need some kind of community financial opportunities to show that we can fill these positions and we really want them to be filled.”
Town council meets on Monday at 6:30pm, and on their agenda is consideration of the funding request from the Rural Health Action Group.
