Health care topped the day’s agenda.
Mayo Hawco, executive director of Tweed’s Gateway Community Health Centre, spoke about primary-care needs in central Hastings County and elsewhere. She said the centre has four physicians willing to work there but no funding for them.
Dr. Robert Pincock, co-leader of the primary care council of the Hastings Prince Edward Ontario Health Team, described the team’s proposal for new primary-care clinics and more.
As of September 2023, a team report stated, 26,400 people across the two counties did not have a primary care provider, such as a family doctor or nurse practitioner.
One in four residents of Hastings and Prince Edward Counties is age 65 or older. That’s 26.5 per cent and greater than the Ontario average of 19 per cent.
The team’s report noted the region has a growing population of racialized people and newcomers. There is a relatively large population, mostly in Hastings County, of people reporting Indigenous identities. There are relatively greater challenges here in meeting basic material needs, it states.
As is often stated by other agencies, the local rates of diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD, or lung disease), frailty and heart failure exceed the provincial averages.
While nearly 62 per cent of Ontarians surveyed report very good or excellent health, 55 per cent of local residents say the same. Fifteen per cent of locals reported fair to poor mental health; the average rate is 9.8 per cent.
Statistics from 2023 show there were more than 27 emergency-department visits per 1,000 people for addictions and mental health reasons, compared to the Ontario average of 17. The rate of COPD-related hospitalizations was more than double the average, at 70.3 per 10,000 people.
Twenty-seven per cent of all lower-acuity emergency department visits were made by people without access to a primary care provider. That’s nearly double Ontario average of 14 per cent.
Most of those so-called “unattached” or “unrostered” patients were younger than age 50. Those without a primary care provider have lower rates of screening for cervical, colorectal and breast cancers – yet they had less prevalence of COPD, diabetes, frailty and heart failure.
Pincock outlined the local Ontario Health Team’s past 18 months of work to try to connect all residents with primary care.
The group’s draft model divides regional areas into five “neighbourhoods.” They are Quinte West, Centre (central) Hastings, North Hastings, Belleville-Tyendinaga, and Prince Edward County. Each would have its own clinic to provide, in an initial phase, primary care for unattached patients.
The goal is to then expand all of the team’s services to both rostered and unrostered patients, with the team then taking the latter patients onto its roster.
Team planners say it will mean “more timely and equitable access to care” in patients’ home communities, and with better results. Patients and providers may develop rapports.
It will be a more holistic type of care, treating the “whole person” and supporting other needs that affect health, the report continues, while also improving transitions in care when patients leave hospital.
The system should reduce the health care system’s costs and the burden on hospitals of caring for patients with lower-acuity conditions.
Improved health care means a more stable economy and more growth potential, the report adds.
And that’s just for patients.
The draft model is also intended to improve care providers’ working lives, allowing them to focus on care, not the business of running a practice. It may mean shift-style work schedules, more interprofessional work, a better work-life balance, and access to other compensation models, digital tools, and a more comprehensive system, according to the report.
For now, the team is waiting for Ontario Health to request a proposal – and no timeline is known. The team will need to finalize its model and, if there’s no provincial funding, decide how to keep working to improve care.
Pincock asked council to write a letter of support for the proposal.
Council voted to receive the information he presented; a letter of support, if any, would require a vote at a later date.
This story will be updated.
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