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Group Health Centre in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., provides primary and specialty care to about 60,000 of the 114,000 residents in the Algoma region. Deborah Baeck/The Globe and Mail
A major health care facility in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., which has been forced to halt admissions of 10,000 patients, said it will open nurse-led clinics next week, with provincial funding, to provide temporary care to those affected.
Group Health Centre, which provides basic and specialist medical care to about 60,000 of the Algoma region's 114,000 residents, announced last Friday that it would stop providing medical care to many of its residents due to a shortage of family doctors.
GHC leadership has been calling for new funding from the province for months to address the worst primary care crisis in its decades-long history, and on Wednesday, Sault Ste. Marie MP Ross Romano announced $2.8 million in funding for the centre's new GHC Access Care Clinic and other efforts to connect people in northern Ontario to primary care.
“While not a replacement for primary care providers, our clinic's services will serve as a bridge to provide essential care management as we continue to work to bring more providers onto our team,” GHC President and CEO Lil Silvano wrote in a letter to community members.
Earlier this week, The Globe and Mail ran an in-depth story about the challenges facing GHC, which opened in 1963 as Canada's first union-supported clinic, and its patients. What's unfolding in Sault Ste. Marie reflects a trend happening across Canada, with millions of people struggling to access primary care, which leads to poorer health outcomes and increased strain on other parts of the system, especially emergency rooms.
“This is not a single measure, but a combination of efforts. It is the result of months of dedication, hard work and strong teamwork,” Romano said in a news release about the new state funding.
Silvano said in an interview that the center plans to pilot the new clinic on Monday, with four nurses working there and hoping to provide care to patients in need. The new clinic will operate in a similar manner to GHC's existing same-day care clinics, with registered patients with more urgent needs being able to get an appointment right away.
But because the clinic is not a replacement for the continuity of care provided by a primary care doctor, Silvano said the center will focus on recruiting more medical staff and eventually returning all affected patients to full-time rostering.
She said the ultimate goal is to get health-care professionals to work more effectively as a team, including by changing existing rules that say only physicians can bill OHIP. Algoma District Medical Group CEO Jodi Stewart said the current system puts doctors at the top of the hierarchy, but in reality all team members should be doing their best to address patients' concerns.
The new clinic will see about 7,000 affected patients who were taken off the register. Two GHC doctors who recently left the centre to set up independent clinics announced earlier this month that they would take 3,000 patients with them.
Silvano added that some of the provincial funding will be used to train new nurses. Ontario has a “Grow Your Own Nurse” initiative that provides funding to health care organizations so they can pay nurses who want to improve their skills. The money will make it easier for registered nurses to take on new nursing roles, said Jordan Zinn, a spokesperson for GHC.
“There are a lot of talented RNs who want to become NPs,” Jin says, “but it's just not realistic for them to quit their jobs and go back to school full time.”
