Adam Prudhomme
Beaver Staff
In an effort to open the door to future doctor recruitment, Stone Mills Township has acquired the Tamworth Medical Centre for $290,000.
The building, located at 52 Concession St., will continue to operate as a medical facility for over 3,000 residents.
“The same physicians are still active,” said Stone Mills chief administrative officer and clerk Bryan Brooks.
“The physicians that are (at the Tamworth Medical Centre) are getting to the point in their career where they’re looking at retirement in the near future. The deal was negotiated essentially on the basis that the municipality could provide some sustainability for new physicians that were interested in taking over for the current physicians.”
Brooks says the building acquisition is part of a broad scale approach to recruiting doctors to the region, which can be a challenge to rural areas.
“There’s two different approaches,” said Brooks. “Many municipalities are offering incentives to physicians to come in and operate for a certain period of time. Our council chose to provide frame work for any interested physician that were interested in coming here by providing them a location that they could operate in good lease terms and somewhere that they could practice from with less stress than that of having to open up your own family medicine practice.”
Brooks says the three doctors that currently operate out of the facility have also agreed to take on any Stone Mills resident without a current family physician.
“Medical services are very important to our residents and their families and the township wanted to make sure that they didn’t lose that service,” added Brooks.
“All the funds are coming from municipal reserves that have been compiled over past years,” said Brooks. “The lease agreement will recover the costs of our investment without any burden to the municipal budget.”
Brooks says the lease agreement projects to replenish the reserve fund within 25 years.