By Alex McCuaig

Still seeking a funding solution

City maternity clinic facing another looming deadline

Dec 18, 2020 | 5:01 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – Time is ticking yet again on the future of the region’s maternity clinic as new admissions are set to end next month unless funding can be found to keep the service going.

At the end of October, the Family Medicine Maternity Clinic (FMMC) based out of the Medicine Hat Regional Hospital was facing imminent closure of services providing a range of health services to low-risk expectant mothers.

Funding was found to keep the clinic going until the end of July but it can’t accept new patients with due dates past that month. With seven months left before that deadline accepting expectant mothers past mid-January might not be possible.

“As far as when does the rubber hit the road,” said FMMC director Dr. Gerry Prince, “for some patients, it’s already hitting the road because they are going, ‘I need someone to care for me and deliver my baby and I don’t know who that is.'”

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But if a funding solution isn’t found in the next few weeks, other options need to start being looked at, said Prince.

“It means that other solutions will have to be found within the community of other family docs being able to step up and do more pre-natal care which hasn’t been an option before or they haven’t chosen that option because we have the maternity clinic,” said Prince, adding some local doctors are willing to do that.

But he says putting pre-natal care back to family doctors isn’t likely to save any money and could cost the health system more.

Prince says the issue comes down to the $300,000 annual cost to run the clinic.

AHS stated earlier this year that that funding decision was determined by the Palliser Primary Care Network – a provincially-funded service that addresses local health care concerns and is run by a board that includes local medical professionals and AHS staff.

For its part, PCN says freezes in per capita funding since 2012 and increased responsibilities put on it by government have le]d to budgetary constraints that won’t allow it to pay for the clinic.

Prince says doctors were asked to pick up the costs but that would financially unfeasible and would result in their offices operating at a loss.