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Mono proposes new option for doctor recruitment
Tuesday September 2 2008
By RICHARD VIVIAN Banner Staff Writer
 
Mono council believes it’s found a way to maintain both local underserviced doctor designations into the future, and make the two sides happy in the process.  
The town has been caught in the middle of a struggle between the Dufferin physician search committee and municipalities in the county’s north, who feel they’ve been ignored by recruitment efforts — a claim the committee denies.
Rather than simply pick a side, Mono council approved a motion it believes would allow for an update to the southern designation and avoid negatively impacting residents in northern Dufferin.
Without an update, spurred by population growth, the county’s south end teeters on the brink of losing its designation and the financial incentives it allows for attracting doctors.
“Nobody wants to see Shelburne left out,” Mayor Lori Haddock says, suggesting Mono’s proposal “gives everybody a fair shake” and “works out very good.”
“It would be the same as we are now, essentially.”
The Mono motion, which requires Amaranth council to agree, would see the Town of Mono join completely with the southern designation, known as Dufferin-Caledon, and Amaranth become a member of the northern designation, officially recognized as the Shelburne designation.
Currently, the populations of both municipalities are split between the two areas — 35 per cent to the north and 65 per cent to the south. Earlier this summer, Amaranth council passed a motion calling for that split to remain.
The new option, prepared by Mono CAO Keith McNenly, result in virtually no change to the population figures used in either designation. It also meets the province’s demand that municipalities no longer be split between designations.
“Now our hope is that Amaranth will say ‘Yeah, that is a good idea’ because that’s exactly what we want to get done, but it does it in a slightly different manner,” says Deputy Mayor Dave Baldwin, who moved the motion. “One of the things you have to preserve is that underserviced designation in both locations.”
Based on population figures currently used by the province, which are about a decade old, Shelburne requires 11 doctors but only has three, and southern Dufferin requires 28 doctors but only has 21.
If Amaranth council agrees with Mono’s proposal, both designations could be updated using 2006 census population figures, which would allow for significantly more doctors to be recruited before financial incentives are lost.
Amaranth council meets tomorrow.
The province gives doctors who agree to work in underserviced areas $40,000 toward paying off their medical school tuition debt.
Louise Kindree, chair of the Dufferin physician search committee, was pleasantly surprised by Mono council’s approach.
“I see it as a win-win,” she says. “It’s really not all that different from what we were proposing, if there had been one entire-county designation. We could have arranged whatever kind of agreements we wanted to within that designation.”
At Tuesday’s meeting, Mono council also agreed to participate in the new Centre Dufferin physician search committee, which is dedicated to attracting doctors to Shelburne.
While the committee has begun initial recruitment efforts, it was waiting on endorsement from Mono council to officially get off the ground.
“We’ll ... support them financially up there to make sure all our residents are taken care of,” says Haddock, who now sits on the committee.
“[We need to] make sure the county facility actually has doctors.”
The only county-owned seniors centre, Dufferin Oaks, is in Shelburne and about half the residents don’t have a doctor.
“We’ll help them out, whatever we can do for them,” Kindree says of the new recruitment committee. “We’ll obviously be concentrating on south Dufferin now.”