Last week, North Kawartha council received an update on what the County health needs assessment is from the Healthcare Advancement Coordinator.
Lori Richey, healthcare advancement coordinator for Peterborough County presented to council an update on what she has been up to over the last several month and her findings in regards to the health needs of the County.
Richey said, “It is estimated that there were approximately 32,000 people within Peterborough, City and County without access to Primary Care. That’s gone up significantly in the last four years. It was down to about 15000 in 2020.”
She explained that there were many reasons for this including doctors retiring while not enough doctors are choosing family medicine as a practice anymore.
This makes it challenging to recruit doctors as there just aren’t enough to go around.
Ritchie said that locally, some of the challenges she is facing include:
- Aging and lack of infrastructure: She said that while Peterborough County has grown significantly, there has only been one new facility built in the County. This can be addressed at a township level through by-laws.
- Lack of accurate data: Ritchey said that she has no idea where the data of 32,000 people without access to a physician came from.
- Lack of candidates: there are only 1,700 medical physicians per year that graduate in all of Canada, very few of these graduates choose family practice.
- Spousal employment opportunities and access to child care: many physicians are looking to bring their families with them, however we do not have opportunities for their spouses or children.
- Lack of housing.
- Family Health organization: a family health organization is a group of physicians that has the ability to approve or deny an addition of another position into their group. Richey explained that if they choose to say that their group is full and they don’t want any more positions, she is no longer able to recruit to that area and it is out of their control. “The rationale for that is that they need to share the pie. So the pie of team-based resources is finite and when they add, they need to share more, which means less for them.”
However, while she has a long list of challenges recruiting physicians to the area, she has also been working on solutions. These include:
- The formation of an alliance of recruiters from across Eastern Ontario: Richey explained that she is spearheading this alliance to work together with other recruiters to look internationally for physicians. Many Canadians go to the UK, Ireland, Australia, or the USA to do their schooling and then write their Canadian Medical Exam to practice here. Richey wants to find those Canadians, mentor them and bring them back to Ontario.
- Develop an ambassador program: physician recruitment can’t be done alone. Richey needs the help of the community to speak up and endorse the area and their townships as a destination for physicians.
- Needs Care Assessment: she has developed a way to collect data on who does not actually have a doctor in the area. “The current list of Health Care Connect, you cannot get on that list if you currently have a doctor, and I will also tell you that none of our physicians actually take patients from that list. So it’s quite useless.” Richey’s list can be found under the tagline Your Health Matters and residents can sign up themselves in an easy to use format. Currently there are about 3000 people on the list but she suspects there are closer to 10,000 people who should be registered.
- Engage the community: Richie will be hosting Town Hall meetings this fall in different communities to hear what residents need in terms of their health and physician troubles.
Council received Richey’s presentation for information.
More information on the current progress of physician recruitment can be found at www.ptbocounty.ca/en/living/your-health-matters.aspx.
