Emergency room in northern Ontario to close Friday due to doctor shortage

The emergency room in the northern Ontario community of Thessalon, east of Sault Ste. Marie, will be closed for the second time this year on Friday, Sept. 13.  it's due to a shortage of doctors to staff the facility.

"This is caused because of a lack of physician coverage for the site," said Tim Vine, the president and CEO of the North Shore Health Network, which runs small hospitals in Thessalon, Blind River and Richard's Landing.

Vine says all three hospitals in the network are highly dependent on locums – where doctors from other regions travel to rural areas to fill in for a short time.

The Thessalon site has two doctors who work at the Bruce Mines clinic – 15 minutes away – who support the site on a more permanent basis. There are no primary care practices currently in the community.

The province runs a temporary locum program, which means Vine and his colleagues don't get much advance notice if they'll receive more funding to hire locums.

Funding for the Temporary Locum Program was due to end on Sept. 30. In a memo sent to small hospital CEOs on Sept. 3, the Ministry of Health announced it would continue funding the program so it could run from Oct. 1. 2024 to March 31, 2025.

The memo said physicians who participate in the program receive premiums and payment for travel expenses.

Vine says he welcomes support from locums, but the longer-term solution for small rural and northern hospitals is for the province to address the overall physician shortage.

"We need to increase the supply of doctors," he said.

"I think there's a fundamental physician supply issue. We also have to make our case rural practice a lot more attractive."

Part of making rural medicine more attractive for doctors, Vine says, is simply paying them more. 

But he adds expectations for rural doctors, who end up doing everything, need to change as well.

"We need to create more flexibility in those contracts for people to concentrate rather than do what we call full-service rural generalism," Vine said.

While the emergency room in Thessalon will be closed Friday, it's scheduled to reopen at 8 a.m. on Saturday. People needing emergency services will be re-routed to Blind River, Richard's Landing, or Sault Ste. Marie