As patients in Cambridge experience a return of hallway healthcare and wait times that are at alarming levels, new federal funding couldn't come at a better time, according to local doctors.
Last Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced how the province will spend $3.1 billion in federal health-care funding, agreeing to direct it toward increasing access to family doctors, reducing backlogs and adding more health-care workers.
For Dr. Mekalai Kumanan, who doubles as a family doctor in Cambridge and president of the Ontario College of Family Physicians, believes it's a positive step in addressing the shortcomings of the provincial healthcare system and thinks the time to act is now.
.jpg.png;w=960)
"We're lacking a strong primary care system and what we see is the impacts on the rest of the system, including emergency departments," said Kumanan. "I think this is a positive step and we will have to see how this funding is handled."
The $3.1 billion for Ontario is meant to bolster new primary health-care teams, bring in more family doctors, nurses and administration staff.
Kumanan notes that family doctors are reaching critical mass, already taking on more patients than they should be.
"I can say, there's not a week that goes by where I'm not asked to take on new patients and it's often a patient of mine, who may have a friend or a family member who's without a family doctor," she said.
Thre are currently around 2.6 million Ontarians without a family doctor and this number is expected to grow to over 4 million in just two years. That number includes an estimated 19,000 residents of Cambridge currently without a family doctor.
Cambridge MP Bryan May notes that Ontario's universal healthcare hasn't been living up to its name as of late and this announcement is meant to get back on track to serving patients.
"The provinces are going to be required to create an action plan for how this money is going to be spent and how we're going to address the gaps in family care, mental health supports and the difficulty of trying to find a family doctor," he said.
He adds this funding will also help provinces break down barriers for internationally trained healthcare workers and get these skilled workers back in the field to address staffing shortages.
There are currently thousands of internationally trained professionals in Ontario who are waiting for applications to be approved to allow them to work, May said.
Another key piece to the funding is adding 700 spots for nurses and healthcare professional programs to incentivize young people to get into the sector.
"Cambridge is not immune to all of these issues," May said. "When there are line ups of ambulances going black at Cambridge Memorial Hospital, because they are waiting to unload patients, this just can't happen."
Kumanan agrees that one of the main things needed to help with the current crisis is the addition of more administration staff and growing the network of local family doctors.
"It's incredibly heartbreaking when you hear these stories of people waiting hours to be seen or having to deal with an illness that's severe and debilitating and not able to get the care that they need," said Kumanan.
"We need to acknowledge that we have seen a downward trend in the number of family physicians and the percentage of family physicians who practice comprehensive family medicine."
This shortage is leading to more patients going to the emergency department and backing up an already overloaded system.
Being a comprehensive family physician herself, Kumanan knows all too well the challenges they have been facing over the past few years as funding dropped, the population aged and staff started disappearing from the field.
"We are spend over 19 hours per week on essentially paperwork. That number of hours not only uses up time where we could be seeing patients, but we also know it significantly contributes to burnout," she said.
If the Cambridge doctor had it her way, this funding would be used to build primary health care teams, allowing patients to be a part of a team of doctors as opposed to only seeing one physician.
She would also like to see competitive wages for physicians, administration staff and nurses as she notes that salaries have not been raised to match inflation and the rising cost of living.
"The time is now, it really is and we see how urgently primary care is needed and all of the fallout effects on the healthcare system it's having," Kumanan said. "It's really important that we do it right and are willing to make the investments needed in our primary care system."
