The new Bonnyville/Aspen Primary Care Network (PCN) went live 1 July 2005.  The full age spectrum of patients see the twelve physicians from this PCN and generally come from the Cold Lake, Bonnyville, St. Paul, Lac La Biche, and Wainwright areas with some even coming from Saskatchewan. Besides an Executive Director, the PCN has hired one nurse
practitioner, one RN and two LPNs to help provide services.

Dr. Jim Ruiter is one of the physician partners involved in this PCN.  He identified the following areas of programming provided by this practice group:

• "We resurrected and have put a fair bit of funding into the palliative care program that was dropped due to lack of funding when the regions were reorganized because we think this program is critical," says Ruiter.  "One risk is that we are not funded for people living in Saskatchewan who need this type of care;"
• Instead of fractitioning patient care into a variety of specialized patient care clinics, the PCN has hired nursing staff to take care of the Chronic Disease components such as diabetes, hypertension and so on.  The nurses see that all of the critical practice guidelines are followed and that patients are navigated properly through the system. This leaves the physicians free to handle the acute problems of the day;
• As part of its Primary Care Program, the PCN has incorporated the Stanford Chronic Disease Self-Management Program.  This 20 year old world-renowned program has resulted in a significant reduction in hospital admissions for people with chronic disease.  The PCN has its first group of patients going through the program now;
• Before the PCN was launched, physicians noticed that patients with fractures were referred back to Emergency for follow up where they would often see a different physician each time.  While no difficulties had been encountered to date, it was viewed as a recipe for disaster.  Now, using two physicians who are interested in this area, we have developed a Cast Clinic so that the same physicians identifying the fractures are the ones doing casts and following up.  This provides more appropriate care;
• To address the issue of younger women not getting their screen tests such as Pap Smears done, the PCN has developed a Well Woman Clinic and has a sexual disease nurse who goes to high schools to encourage women in the target audience to get screened; and
• Rather than having new moms and their babies attend Well Baby appointments both with their family physician as well as with Public Health, the PCN chose to have physicians go to the health unit where they work as part of a Well Baby team.  "There is teaching that goes on both ways," says Ruiter.  "The doctors are learning what the nurses do and vice versa.  This one-stop concept for patients has already proven itself in enabling earlier diagnosis and intervention for post partum depression and in providing rapid diagnosis and referrals for paediatric issues.  As far as we know, we are the only PCN in Alberta that has doctors attending the unit to work on the Well Baby team."