The municipalities of Riding Mountain West and Russell/Binscarth are again working together to tackle long-held issues in health care for our area communities, hoping to expand to include the communities further afield, many of whom are dealing with the same issues of health care coverage.
“We’ve established a new initiative between the Municipality of Russell Binscarth and the RM of Riding Mountain West called the Assiniboine Valley Health Board,” Adrienne Falloon, CAO of the Municipality of Russell Binscarth explained at a joint meeting with members of the two municipalities with the Russell Banner.
“It’s like a reincarnation of what used to exist, which was called the Banner County Health Foundation,” she explained, adding that for now, recruitment and retention of health care professionals is one of their main priorities. “We’re going to start with doctors and move onto the rest of the health professionals like nurses, radiologists, lab techs etc.”
Together, councillors and CAO’s of both municipalities will continue to lobby for infrastructure and capital projects like improvements to the hospital - especially the ER, diagnostics and counselling area, and improvements to the hospital as well.
That’s part of the message they took to the Minister of Health on the first Wednesday of the month.
“We had been sending letters to the Minister of Health about the state of rural health care and their staff had reached out and said that they will be in Brandon for MLA Day at the Brandon Winter Fair and asked if we could meet with them there,” Falloon said
“We reiterated our concerns about the lack of health care professionals, the availability of ambulances in rural Manitoba as a whole as well as the need for support in infrastructure and capital projects,” Adrienne added.
“And they seemed to be really receptive.”
“Initiatives to support EMS training and recruitment were discussed,” said councillor Wes Anderson
“We did offer Russell/Binscarth to become a training hub and a host community for the new EMR program that they had successfully launched in Arborg,” Anderson added.
“And they did ask how many students we might be able to accommodate here, so that seemed to be very positive.”
“Overall, they seemed very receptive and willing to work together at the provincial level for both recruitment and retention of health care professionals,” Falloon said, explaining that the province now has their new recruitment office which is a step above Prairie Mountain Health.
“It's like a provincial agency where the Minister, and their Chief of Staff, is putting us in contact with them to work together on attracting doctors and keeping them here through their provincial recruitment agency.”
With that cooperative effort between the province and the two municipalities established, the conversation here turned back to the idea behind the Assiniboine Valley Health Board as a very necessary cooperative effort not only between our two municipalities but others in the surrounding area who have availed themselves of medical services in place here.

Be informed! Get the whole story in this weeks Russell Banner on page 2.