By Cecilia Nasmith/Today’s Northumberland
County council’s Community Health Committee is hoping a county-wide unified approach to physician recruitment can make a difference in a crisis that threatens to more than double the number of Northumberland patients without primary care physicians within a mere two years.
The committee heard from Ontario Health Team-Northumberland Executive Lead Andrea Groff and Ontario Health Team-Northumberland Lead Physician Dr. Fraser Cameron about this new way of tackling the problem, for which Groff provided details.
“We are losing physicians faster than we can replace them, and three separate committees are working on replacement,” she said at Tuesday’s committee meeting, referring to the West Northumberland Physician Recruitment Committee and Docs by the Bay for the East Region as well as Trenton and Quinte, plus a committee based at Campbellford Memorial Hospital.
It takes three new primary care physicians to replace one retiring physician, and 40% of Ontario’s physicians are considering retiring in the next five years. The 2.5-million Ontarians without a family doctor is a contingent that is expected to rise to at least 4.4-million by 2026, according to forecasts by the Ontario College of Family Physicians. In Northumberland, the 8,000 unattached patients could become more than 20,000 by that time.
Groff referred to a recent Design Thinking project – “a person-centered approach to problem solving,” she explained – that involved the a team from Toronto Metropolitan University with the OHT-N and a number of stake holders throughout the county. Direct engagement was also conducted with patient, family and caregiver members of the OHT-N Experience Partner Council.
Lack of a unified county-wide focus on recruitment was identified, along with a need for better ways to market what the community can offer, better housing and financial incentives and a recognition of the administrative burden and burnout of doctors.
This kind of consolidated strategy and unified oversight in physician recruitment was identified as a priority action.
The ask for Northumberland County is to split the cost with OHT-N to recruit a project resource staffer for a six-month $90,000 contract to create a county-wide playbook for a unified strategy that includes key performance indicators (including supply-and-demand analysis), a single marketing strategy, and aligned and co-ordinated incentives. Oversight will be provided by a steering committee made up of Physician Recruitment Working Group members.
“I am confident this will set us up in a better position for physician-recruitment success,” Groff said.
And over the six months of this work, Dr. Cameron added, their recommendation is that the recruitment efforts of the three existing committees continue.
Warden Brian Ostrander expressed his hope that any strategy will acknowledge the special challenges each community faces. In Brighton, for example, families with loved ones based at CFB Trenton find that these loved ones receive care from the Canadian Air Force but their families do not. The result is an unattached complement of patients who move into and out of the community every two to six years.
Committee member Lucas Cleveland expressed his hope for a way to rush the accreditation of immigrants who left behind medical training and careers.
“There are many, many people in Northumberland who were doctors in their previous lives,” he stated.
Both committee members expressed frustration at the six-month time frame for such an immediate problem.
“I do understand the pain is here,” Ostrander said.
“We knew this particular freight train was coming, and have done very little. As with all quietly downloaded services, here we are at the county and municipal level, thinking none of us should have to do this – but we know we need to do it because the people of our county require it.
“I know you know that. I’m just airing my frustration now.”
Nevertheless, committee members were enthusiastic about the project and will recommend it to county council.
Health care in Ontario was also the subject of the next item on the agenda, a joint letter from the Ontario Medical Association and the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, calling on municipalities to urge the Province of Ontario to recognize the physician shortage, to fund health care appropriately, and to ensure every Ontarian has access to physician care.
The motion of support noted that per-capita health spending in Ontario is the lowest of all provinces in Canada.
Ostrander added an amendment to the motion asking county council to “endorse the fast-tracking of licensing foreign-trained doctors in the province of Ontario.”
