Program helping northern Ontario ERs stay open set to expire
CTV
A program that helps rural and northern Ontario hospitals avoid temporary ER closures is set to expire at the end of the month, after a series of last-minute renewals, and hospitals are anxiously awaiting word from the government on what happens next.
A program that helps rural and northern Ontario hospitals avoid temporary ER closures is set to expire at the end of the month, after a series of last-minute renewals, and hospitals are anxiously awaiting word from the government on what happens next.
Many of the province's more isolated hospitals rely on doctors from urban areas filling shifts on what is known as a locum basis, and the Temporary Locum Program pays them a premium as an incentive.
Rural and northern hospitals have said the program has helped them keep their emergency department doors open as they struggle with shortages of local doctors, but they have not yet heard what will happen after the current expiry date of March 31.
"We are getting dangerously close to that April 1st when we'll be without that incentive for locums," said Tim Vine, CEO of North Shore Health Network, which has three sites between Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury.
"So, we wait with great anticipation and hope that it will be continued."
The province established the COVID-19 Temporary Summer Locum Program during the pandemic, and it expired last March 31 before the government renewed it to Sept. 30, dropping the COVID-19 from the program title. Then in September, the province extended it to March 31 of this year, again under a new name, the Temporary Locum Program.
The renewal announcement last spring came two months after it had actually expired, and in that interim period the lack of funding led to four temporary closures of Thessalon's ER, which was relying entirely on locum physicians due to having no primary care physician in the community.
