The mayor of Bonavista is allaying fears about the future of the local hospital amid difficulties in securing physicians for the facility.

John Norman took to Facebook last week to offer assurances to area residents that their local hospital facilities are not closing.

Norman also serves as co-chair of Tip-A-Vista Wellness Foundation and co-chair of the Community Advisory Council on Healthcare.

He says while they still have family physicians in private practice, the difficulty has been in recruiting and retaining physicians for their hospital facility. They don’t have the physicians needed to run their acute ward or emergency department.

Discussions are currently underway in the province to find savings within the health care system amid a sobering fiscal situation, leading to questions about the viability of certain health care services and facilities. Bonavista, Norman says, is one of a small number of rural regions in the province currently bucking demographic trends with a growing young population. He believes the solution lies in the way in which their hospital is categorized.

Bonavista is a Category B Hospital, yet is much busier than most Category B facilities, meaning physicians are not compensated appropriately for the workload. That means many physicians will go to Clarenville an hour-and-a-half away which is a Category A hospital.