Following 12 months of meetings and negotiations, Alberta Health Services and Covenant Health agreed to keep pathology services at the Bonnyville Regional Health Centre last week, completing a remarkable turnaround after the provincial health body initially decided it would be shutting down the northeast regional lab last spring.
Dr. Kevin Worry, North Zone Medical Director for AHS, said he met with top executives from AHS and Covenant, as well as MLA for Bonnyville – Cold Lake Genia Leskiw and Town of Bonnyville Mayor Gene Sobolewski in Edmonton last Thursday, where, after much discussion, a final decision was made.
“Having explored many options and having conducted a significant consultation evaluation, it was determined Bonnyville could continue to provide pathology services safely and efficiently with one pathologist on site, while implementing appropriate quality assurance supports,” Worry said.
The move completes a remarkable change in direction from AHS after they announced last year they intended to eliminate pathology services in Bonnyville in favour of moving towards developing a new “centre of excellence” in Edmonton following the retirement of one of Bonnyville's two pathologists – Dr. Bob Davey.
The pathology lab at the hospital is responsible for running a “full spectrum diagnostics lab” according to the now retired Davey. When speaking to the Nouvelle last year, Davey indicated those labs extended into microbiology, basic hematology, basic coagulation studies, blood bank work and chemistry testing and analysis, with between 500,000 and 600,000 procedures conducted per year.
Worry said further steps would be taken in the short-term to ensure pathology services in Bonnyville retain a “certain level of quality”.
“The Bonnyville pathology unit will have support through multi-pathologist sites with sub-specialty expertise in Edmonton,” Worry said. “We've also conducted an evaluation to ensure the workload of the one remaining pathologist would be reasonable.”
He added, “This has taken (a long time) simply because of the consultation processes and the steps we've been through to make sure we came to a sustainable solution that would be good for front line doctors and more importantly what's best for patients.”
Dr. Guy Lamoureux, Medical Director at the Bonnyville Regional Health Centre, was understandably pleased by the decision to keep pathology services in Bonnyville.
“I think this was a reasonable compromise and a positive thing for the Bonnyville hospital. We'll be able to maintain in house service for our patients and that's very positive for us since it looked like for a while that we'd lose it,” Lamoureux said. “Our initial position was that we hoped to replace our retiring pathologist and continue to do the work we had been doing, but the compromise we've come to is to support our one remaining pathologist with backup from Edmonton.”
Both Lamoureux and Worry went on record to thank Leskiw and Sobolewski for all their hard work and “exceptional leadership” in pushing this issue to an acceptable resolution for all parties.
Leskiw said that although she wasn't totally clued in on all the details surrounding the decision, she was pleased to see headway being made to keep pathology services in the northeast.
“I think we had a great meeting last week, with a very positive solution,” Leskiw said. “Having both Covenant Health and AHS together in the same room was key to making things happen. Considering where we started a year ago, this is a very pleasing outcome.”
With the growth of this region very well documented, Leskiw said it was important that the province look to at least maintain, if not improve the level of services on offer at the Bonnyville hospital.
“This is a positive thing because Bonnyville is growing, but of course when we talk about this issue we're not talking about just Bonnyville, this is about primary care in our region,” Leskiw said. “I think it's time we start pushing for fields of excellence (in the northeast). Bonnyville is noted for a lot of good primary care, we're blessed with a good hospital. We're a long ways from Edmonton so the more facilities or services we can provide in our regional hospitals is a good thing.”
Sobolewski, who picked up the reins in pushing this issue when he became mayor last October, said he was pleased to see the “collaborative effort” of all those involved in the decision making process coming together to ensure there was a positive outcome for the local hospital and its patients.
“I'm absolutely pleased with this outcome – it took the collaborative efforts of (local) Covenant and AHS (officials), our MLA and myself to be able to impress upon Covenant and AHS just how important it was to have the pathology lab remain here in Bonnyville,” Sobolewski said.
Sobolewski noted that he had several other additional meetings with Covenant Health and AHS to discuss the possibility of improving health services and acute care services in Bonnyville. Overall he feels this news is an important “win” for the town and its residents.
“Of course this is important for the town and it's residents – the reason we're all invested in this and pushing this in the first place is because we want to ensure a certain quality of care remains in Bonnyville for our residents,” Sobolewski said.
Both Leskiw and Sobolewski said AHS had committed to looking into improving services in the northeast, with Worry himself saying he would be doing what he could to recruit more family physicians for Bonnyville.
With the decision to keep pathology services in Bonnyville, Worry believes there was enough on the table to ensure all parties went home happy.
“I think this is something that multiple stakeholders are happy with – I'm hearing this is something AHS is pleased with, Covenant are happy and the local doctors are happy,” Worry said. “I think this reflects well on local decision making and also reflects our commitment to safe and quality health care.”