At the end of summer, on Wednesday, August 27, administrators of Open Health Niverville entertained a visit by the province’s Minister of Health, Uzoma Asagwara. They arrived with an entourage of representatives from Southern Health-Sante Sud (SHSS).
“We discussed the history of Open Health, how we got here, our mission statement, and vision for the future,” says Nathan Dueck, councillor and president of Niverville Healthcare Services. “We talked about our catchment area and our ability to grow with our [current] expansion… I think they were very impressed with where we’re at. I don’t think they had conceptions of what Niverville was all about.”
Realistically, Dueck says that Niverville will likely never be chosen as a location for a hospital. The town’s request of the Minister and of SHSS, he says, was for better collaboration between provincial health bodies and Open Health.
Dueck’s hope is that they’ll be able to work together to find ways for Niverville to increase its primary healthcare services under their current hybrid model of community ownership. This, he says, will take some outside-the-box thinking.
Open Health administrators believe the community has the ability and ingenuity to reduce capacity on an overtaxed healthcare system, if allowed. But to do that, current legislation on rural clinics will need to be addressed.
Currently, the legislation is inhibitive, and some of it affects access to doctors. The extreme shortage of doctors, Dueck says, is not a Niverville-centric problem. It’s province-wide.
“Part of the problem is that, as our population grows, our healthcare system has not,” says Mayor Myron Dyck. “Why we don’t index healthcare workers to population [growth], I will never know, whether it’s opening seats in our universities or bringing people into this country with specific skillsets.”
The Minister’s visit took place as a direct result of Niverville council’s sponsorship of this year’s Minister’s Dinner, providing municipal administrators one-on-one access to members of the provincial cabinet.
“I think one of the biggest wins out of that entire [meeting] is an acknowledgement, or at least a verbal understanding, that we’re all in this together and that Niverville is willing to commit the time, effort, and resources to grow healthcare [in this region],” says Dueck.
In May 2024, an expansion of the clinic began which will add four exam rooms and a minor procedures room. According to Dueck, that part of the clinic should be open by October of this year, if all goes as planned.