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With 93,000 people in the London area currently living without a family doctor, efforts to lure new physicians to the area continues with urgency.
A physician recruitment program run by the Middlesex-London Ontario Health Team has recruited seven doctors over the past two year, with almost two dozen other doctors considering the area.
“We have about 22 more who are considering coming here to practice,” executive director of the Middlesex-London Ontario Health Team Amber Alpaugh-Bishop said.
About 275,000 Ontarians have been connected with a primary care provider in the first year of the province’s Primary Care Action Plan, she said, putting Ontario on track to meet its initial goal of connecting 300,000 patients.
The local program is focused on increasing the number of physicians practicing in the region, including in a team-based setting where various health-care options are available.
Meeting growing demand for primary care
“We’ve had great [population] growth here, and we just need to now catch up,” Alpaugh-Bishop said. “It is important when people move into this community that have access to primary care.”
Each family doctor typically takes on between 1,000 and 1,500 patients, a number that can increase when physicians work as part of a team that includes nurses and other health care professionals.
“We recently received about a $5 million investment in this community to expand primary care teams,” Alpaugh-Bishop said. “That allows us to leverage other team members in the primary care system to support even more people.”
The Middlesex-London Ontario Health Team says doctors recruited to the region can be matched with patients through Health Care Connect, a provincial registry used to link people without a family physician to available providers. (kobps2/Shutterstock)
To attract doctors, the program promotes both professional support and day-to-day life in the London-Middlesex area, including help with setting up a practice and getting settled in the community.
“There are many great things here about this community of Middlesex London,” she said. “We have lots of pressures on our system and challenges, but we have lots of great work going on here.”
Alpaugh-Bishop said new physicians are supported through a practice facilitation team that helps them understand the local health-care system and connect with other providers.
Residents without a family doctor are encouraged to register with Health Care Connect, a provincial program used to match patients with available physicians. People can sign up online at ontario.ca/healthcareconnect or by calling 811.