Cash bonus boosted to help recruit doctors for new family-care clinic in Grand Falls-Windsor

The Newfoundland and Labrador government has a location for its newly announced family-care team in Grand Falls-Windsor: the Killick Clinic in the Lynken Building on Lincoln Road in the central Newfoundland town.

Now it just needs the family-care team.

Health Minister Tom Osborne announced Tuesday morning that the clinic will accommodate 21 staff members, including two doctors, a nurse practiitioner, a physiotherapist, an occupational therapist and a psychologist.

"This team will help ensure that people in the area are connected to primary health care," said Osborne at a news conference.

The provincial health authority will now start recruiting to staff the team, said Osborne.

There have now been 19 family-care teams announced, said the health minister, with 14 of them either partially or fully operational, with plans for Gander and Lab West to be established as well. The provincial government has touted team-based care as a way to help the thousands of people in the province who don't have a family doctor.

Partnership with Grand Falls-Windsor clinic

The family-care team will be operated in partnership with Killick Health Services, which operates a doctor's office in the town. Dr. Kris Lusbcombe, the clinic's director, said Killick has infrastructure and experience in delivering health-care services.

"It's really a situation where we have a bit of a built-up shop to be able to come in and set up a family-care team," he said.

"We hear physicians say, 'Listen, I just want to show up with my stethoscope.' So I think the positive thing about this model is that many of the business headaches of operating a family practice clinic will be supported by individuals with considerable experience in running these types of practices."

The government hopes cash incentive will staff the clinic, and has now grouped Grand Falls-Windsor and Deer Lake with rural areas where it's having difficulty recruiting health-care professionals — doctors who set up shop in either of those regions can expect a contract-signing bonus of $200,000. And in an attempt to fill gaps in Labrador, doctors who establish a practice will get a $300,000 bonus.

Paul Dinn, the PC Opposition's health critic, says he wants to know where the staff will come from.

"It's great to list off this clinic as having this, this and this, but where are they coming from?" he said.

"At the end of the day, you're still going to need staff to go in these clinics, and obviously the dollars aren't working so there's something else that's not working in the recruitment and retention that this government claims to have."

Luscombe said the money helps but can't be the only incentive because it won't be enough.

"What I have heard in my many roles is it's a combination between competitive and fair compensation, and a good work environment," said Luscombe, who's also the past-president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Medical Association.

"Undoubtedly, these financial incentives are good carrots to help draw people into the system, but we've continued to say, and I think government has continued to recognize, that the system has to function better. There's no amount of money that's going to make somebody work to a point of being burnt out and overwhelmed."

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