WE FIND IT APPALLING that a 160- bed, municipally owned nursing home should be without a medical director who is at least residing within the municipality.

Yet that is the situation at the county-ownedand operated Dufferin Oaks in Shelburne.

Dr. Brian Taylor, who replaced Dr. George Vanderburgh as medical director, not only resides somewhere outside Dufferin County but acts in a similar capacity at Shelburne Residence and apparently some other nursing homes, and might also be the owner of a "medical spa" in Toronto.

This is not meant as a criticism of Dr. Taylor, who might well be most highly qualified in the medical sense for the position he holds at The Oaks.

It is, however, written in amazement that the selection committee would have seen fit to appoint a non-resident, part-time physician to a position that should be seen as requiring virtual full-time availability.

As medical director, Dr. Vanderburgh maintained his private practice within the Oaks/Mel Lloyd complex in recent years, prior to which he practised out of a building on Shelburne's Owen Sound Street.

We do appreciate the difficulties encountered by Dufferin's two areas designated as underserviced, and we suspect that the Dufferin Oaks Board of Management would have encountered similar problems in its quest for a replacement for Dr. Vanderburgh.

But surely there is some physician within the county who would find it possible to dedicate at least one day a week to the needs of the 160 elderly residents of The Oaks as the institution's medical director.

Such a doctor needn't have a practice in Shelburne nor be a resident of the town. Someone practising in any of the county's three urban centres, or close to them, would be available on short notice.

For some reason, serving the county facility was not part of the employment agreement covering seven of Orangeville's newest physicians, who have been recruited to staff Highlands Health Network, the county-funded medical clinic adjacent to the Orangeville campus of Headwaters Health Care Centre, where they are expected, however, to fill in at the Emergency Department.

Might we suggest that an attempt should be made to have the clinic's doctors each spend one day a week in space provided them (at no cost) in the Mel Lloyd Centre?

Meanwhile, we would urge county council and the Oaks management to renew efforts to find a medical director who is prepared to live in Dufferin and ideally have a practice based in Shelburne.