Dr. Tony Mucciarone started the project five years ago with an idea and a "let's go with it and see what happens" attitude. Two physicians, Dr. Tony Mucciarone and Dr. James Richards, now work with the project in an Alternate Relationship Plan (ARP). Each day starts with a multidisciplinary team meeting, including MD's, nurses, Home Care, physiotherapy, public health, a psychologist, and a social worker. The physicians see patients in the clinic and are on call for ER. They have close communication with their primary care nurse about patient teaching, blood pressure checks, injections, etc. and often speak with Home Care nurses, especially about the care of the elderly in the community.

The Palliser Health Authority runs the project office and hires staff, maintains the clinic, provides office and medical supplies. This frees up the physicians from running the office. The physicians practice full-time and are paid on a contract basis. On-call coverage is done by the physicians with one in two call for the weekdays and one weekend of call per month. The Rural Locum Program provides locum coverage for weekends and holidays.

Mucciarone sees that this ARP model has two strengths: enabling the community to attract physicians, and providing residents in the immediate and surrounding communities with preventative and comprehensive care. "We have been able to attract more doctors to come here because of the way we practice using the model," says Mucciarone. "We have been freed up from running the office and that has allowed us to focus more on the practice of rural medicine. We have a primary care nurse who works with us on prevention through teaching. We also have a contract. All these attributes help to relieve some of the stress of running a medical practice. We can spend more time with patients who require more care. Our model works well in smaller centres' continues Mucciarone, "I am not sure how well it would work in a larger centre."