The waitlist for residents of the Almaguin Highlands looking for a primary health care provider is about to take a dramatic drop.
As of Nov. 1, the Almaguin Highlands Family Health Team, (AHFHT) formerly the Burk’s Falls Family Health Team, will have a second nurse practitioner on staff to ease the existing waitlist load.
Currently, the six family health team physicians at the medical centre have a patient roster of about 4,500 residents from Burk’s Falls, Armour, Ryerson, McMurrich/Monteith, Kearney, Perry, and Magnetawan.
However, sitting on the sidelines in the area are 850 to 1,000 people waiting for a primary health care provider.
Rebecca Paul, executive director of the health team, said some people have been on the healthcare waiting list for four years.
But Paul said that wait will end for some residents, thanks to the Ministry of Health providing the team with $290,000 in annual core funding to expand its services.
The funds will allow the team to hire a registered nurse and nurse practitioner. Paul said having two nurse practitioners on staff will help take about 400 people off the waiting list.
Paul expects the wait list number to drop even further.
In the year that she’s been on staff, the AHFHT has hired a dietician who has been seeing patients, meaning they don’t have to see their own doctor as often.
Paul said this frees physicians up to take more patients off the waiting list.
She adds what also has eased the physician patient load is having a social worker on staff, who provides mental health therapy and case management for patients.
“It means they also don’t have to see a doctor,” she said.
Paul noted that having a second nurse practitioner will result in fewer people going to the emergency department for care.
“We want to divert people from the emergency department, but if they don’t have a physician or nurse practitioner where else are they going to go?” Paul said.
Paul said some patients have been referred to the unattached clinic in Huntsville, “but as we begin to roster more people, hopefully it diverts some hospital emergency visits.”
Paul said the Sundridge and District Medical Centre will also see a drop in its patient wait list. That’s because when the Ministry of Health approved money for the AHFHT, it also awarded annual funding of $320,000 to Sundridge to hire a second nurse practitioner, a registered nurse, and one administrative person.
Both funding allocations will flow through the AHFHT, which will be the employer for these new employees at both locations.
Paul said in the case of Burk’s Falls, once the nurse practitioner comes on board Nov. 1, the AHFHT can start to register patients after that date.
Having two nurse practitioners also means patients are not left without care when one of them is away, since they can see the other health care provider.
“Historically, when there was only one nurse practitioner, there was no coverage if they were absent or on leave,” Paul said.
“Now if one is away, the other can look after the patients.”
Paul said the organization has an assurance from Ontario Health that the allocations for both centres will remain core funding.
“It was meant to attach patients,” she said. “You can’t do that for a year and then the funding is gone and the patients are stranded. It wouldn’t make any sense.”
Paul says that one of her goals when she was hired was “to increase awareness of our team, the community, and everything the family health team does.
“Part of that was going to be to create a website and if we were going to do that, then maybe it was appropriate for a new name,” Paul said in explaining how the new family health team name came about.
The website, which can be found at ahfht.ca, includes information about services and programs in addition to who makes up the family health team, the staff and a news section. Services include the relaunch of a hypertension program, with the AHFHT recently buying 24 blood pressure monitors.
The website is also used as a recruiting tool and Paul said the recruitment of nurses, physicians and administrative staff is competitive.
The website also provides a link to the team's Facebook page, where the public will find information on seasonal programs such as flu and COVID vaccine shots.
More recently, there has been a new posting calling on artists to have their artwork displayed at the centre as part of the rebranding.
Paul said a further initiative has the team working with the Muskoka and Area Ontario Health Team and Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare on a congestive heart failure partnership.
With the addition of new and expanded services, plus the job growth at the health centre, the new chair of the AHFHT Board of Directors, said the board now needs more members.
"We want to make sure we have the right type of experience on the board so we can strategize for the future," said Rod Ward, who is also the mayor of Armour Township.
“We already have the health care experience because several of the board members are physicians and a pharmacist,” Ward said.
“But there are areas like HR, finance, legal, governance, and patient experience we want to fill. If people have these types of experiences, it would be a real help to us.”
Sitting on the board doesn't require a big time commitment, said Ward, who added those extra volunteers would “broaden the board’s horizons.” Those interested can contact Paul through the website.
Seven members make up the current board and Ward says the goal is to increase its size to nine or 10 people by the end of the year.
Rocco Frangione is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter with Almaguin News. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
