Alberta premier promises new funding deal for family doctors coming soon

For the second time in five years a St. Albert woman has found herself without a family doctor.

"It's very frustrating," said Kim Pearce. "She for whatever reason closed her practice effective Aug. 3."

Her search, a little more difficult because she feels more comfortable with a female doctor.

"The last time I checked Alberta Health Services website to see where the closest female doctor accepting new patients was, was Westlock and Hinton," Pearce said.

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She's one of about 700,000 Albertans who don't have a family doctor.

"I'm hearing more and more that are actually making the decision that they are going to have to close because they haven't seen a new funding model announced or activated," said Dr. Paul Parks, Alberta Medical Association president.

Parks said it's happening more in smaller communities that already have few family physicians to start with.

"It's the family physicians that staff the hospitals and the emerg departments and it's the rural generalists that are providing that care, so as communities lose those physicians, not only do they lose access to primary care, but also their hospitals close," he said.

"There's two concurrent crises going on in the healthcare system," Parks added.

On Saturday, Premier Danielle Smith addressed the issue on her radio show

"We are very generous with our doctors and we want to continue to be generous with our doctors," she said, adding "We are very close to making a funding arrangement."

Parks said the AMA has spent six months working on a new funding model for family physicians with the government.

"We need the government to pull the trigger on that like ASAP," said Parks.

"Get that funding model out so we can maintain and retain the physicians we have right now but also we can attract new family physicians across the province," he added.

The health minister's press secretary would not provide details about the new compensation model saying discussions were ongoing.

"Our government is committed to getting this across the finish line and expect that we will have more to say before the end of September," said Andrea Smith.

The premier said the plan will incentivize doctors to take on a minimum of 500 patients.

"You have to have a doctor who has enough patients that they are working on more than one day a week," Smith said. "I know that's frustrating for some doctors. Doctors are going to have to make choices," she added.

Parks said the new model is ready to go, that it moves away from a fee for service model which will allow practices to be more viable.

He added it will include payment for panels the physicians have based on how many patients they have and how complex they are.

There will also be payments for time doctors spend caring for a patient directly or indirectly as well as payments for the volume of patients.

"It's a new blended model that will really incent and actually allow for the viability of longitudinal care," he said.

Parks hopes the government will also act quickly to help stabilize acute care.

"I'm not sure when they intend to act and we desperately need them to. We gave them that plan in December," he said.

With files from CTV News Edmonton's Chelan Skulski