One year later: Group Health Centre still has 7,000 people waiting for a primary care provider
CBC
Thousands of people in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., continue to rely on a temporary nurse practitioner clinic set up after the Group Health Centre (GHC) de-rostered 10,000 patients just over a year ago.
It was an event that brought home the doctor shortage suddenly and vividly, and continues to highlight issues surrounding recruitment and retention of family doctors.
More than a year later, the president and CEO of GHC, Lil Silvano, said 7,000 patients still aren't assigned a family practitioner.
As an interim measure, the province provided $2.8 million last May to help set up a nurse practitioner clinic, which was meant to meet the needs of the patients who were dropped at the end of May 2024 when two doctors left the centre and others retired.
Silvano said that during the past year, a pair of doctors opened their own practice and took on 3,000 patients. Otherwise, the number of patients without doctors has been rising and falling with recruitment and more retirements, creating the need for constant adjustments.
She said thousands of patients have been re-rostered to GHC over the past year, thanks to the recruitment of three nurse practitioners and a new doctor through the Practice Ready Ontario program, which streamlines the certification of internationally trained doctors.
However, Silvano said three doctors retired in the past year and two more are expected to retire in the next few months.
On the positive side, she said the centre is preparing to welcome two more internationally trained physicians and another nurse practitioner, but the situation remains in flux.
"A lot of ebbs and flows as our physicians retire, the clinic is able to absorb patients and then we're continuing our efforts in recruitment, so with these additional providers we will be able to pull more patients back," she said.
As for the temporary clinic staffed by part time and casual nurse practitioners, she said there is still a lot of pressure on it.
She said they're trying to reduce wait times for appointments by diverting some people to regular nurses if they don't require a nurse practitioner.
But the clinic only has provincial funding until the spring, and Silvano said it will take longer to re-roster all patients.
"I think right now, our access care clinic is one-time funding and we're really advocating to extend that funding because we know that we're not going to be able to re-roster everybody by the end of March," she said.
Silvano said the goal is to have everyone under the umbrella of the Group Health Centre after next year.
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