One year later: Group Health Centre still has 7,000 people waiting for a primary care provider

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.

"We just need a little more time," she said.

There are some bright spots for some who have been re-rostered, including a 94-year-old man who lost his doctor at GHC last year.

Laurie Kendrick advocated for her father and has been critical of the temporary clinic, finding it hard to access and inconsistent.

But last March, she received the good news that he had been assigned to a nurse practitioner at GHC.

The consistent care has made a world of difference to her father's health, said Silvano, who was previously critical of the way the temporary access clinic operated.

"I'm really happy to sing their praises now because when my dad has an appointment, if he could have a test that very same day as his appointment, they've sent him over to X-ray to get an X-ray done," she said.

"He can, you know, make sure the blood work request goes in right away so that while we're out, I can take him up to the lab and get blood work done. It's just been so much more simple."

Meantime, Silvano defended the clinic, saying at least patients will stay on their radar.

"I'm really grateful for us being able to have the access care clinic because it does kind of have a holding spot for these patients," she said, noting it keeps some of them from having to go to the emergency room at the local hospital.