Strathmore is one of many places in Canada dealing with a doctor shortage.
According to Primary Care Networks (PCN), Strathmore only has one clinic accepting new patients, with many facilities not offering walk-in appointments.
Strathmore resident Taylor Cooke said she had to find a doctor in Chestermere to get consistent healthcare.
"It's very frustrating. I have a five-year-old daughter, so any kind of minor illness, we don't have anyone close to go to. We always have to drive or plug up emergency rooms over a cough," said Cooke.
"I think emergency rooms are for emergencies, not for a cough that a kid can't get rid of for three weeks."
Cooke has been living in Strathmore for five years and said that she's always struggled to find a doctor.
"We were still driving to High River for our family doctor. Once Valley Medical was accepting new patients, we quickly got in there. The doctor was consistent for about seven or eight months, and then he left the practice to work in emergency."
Cooke claims that doctors in Strathmore aren't paid as much as the surrounding area, such as in Calgary.
"I thought it was universal, but lots of people were saying that doctors are going for more money in the city."
Pat Fule, Mayor of Strathmore, said that the town has been working to help bring more doctors into the area. One of those ways was through $90,000 worth of grants given as an incentive to international doctors.
"A clinic could apply for a $30,000 grant to help them with the costs of training a doctor and getting them certified. There are a lot of costs and hoops you have to jump through, so we thought if we could take that cost off clinic's hands it could help attract a doctor."
However, Fule said that no clinics have accepted the town's offer.
"We thought one of the clinics would have taken us up on the grant," added Fule. "We hope that one will."
Fule has also been working alongside Frontier Diagnostics (FD), a group of doctors that are willing and able to bring a CT scanner to Strathmore while covering the startup and operating costs.
"We'd like to create a healthcare hub that would help all of the residents in the area with their healthcare needs. We'd like to be a facility where somebody who lives out of town could get timely CT scans in Strathmore."
The mayor is now hoping that the provincial government will provide FD with a contract for CT scan interpretation.
"It would be a huge cost saving for our government, and it would be a reduced cost for patient transfers to Calgary."
Despite the lack of healthcare options in Strathmore, Alberta has the most registered physicians in the province's history. According to Health Minister Adriana LaGrange, 2024 saw 474 new physicians start work in Alberta.
LaGrange claims that this is the highest year for physician growth in over a decade and that they plan to tackle the doctor shortage through the creation of Primary Care Alberta.
"This will create a modern, more responsive and unified health care system that prioritizes patients, empowers front-line health care professionals and helps reduce pressures on the entire health system," wrote the Minister of Health's office.
"By coordinating primary health care services in Alberta, Albertans will have improved access to primary health care and reduce or avoid visiting emergency departments or relying on other acute care services for their primary or non-emergency health care."
However, the province also said that Alberta's increasing population has led to fewer residents finding access to doctors. In 2024 there were 247 doctors for every 100,000 residents in the province, down from 253 in 2019.
StrathmoreNow reached out to local clinics, PCN, and Alberta Health Services for comment on the story, but did not receive an answer by publication time.