investment in\u00a0the Access Care Clinic<\/a>, provider retention and support initiatives,\u00a0as well as the Grow Your Own Nurse Practitioner program.<\/p>\nThe 8,000 who are being called represent almost all of the approximately 8,500 de-rostered patients that are currently being served at the Access Care Clinic, which was put in place as a temporary measure to serve those who lost their primary care provider at the GHC.<\/p>\n
The Grow Your Own Nurse\u00a0Practitioner program\u00a0helps local registered nurses transition to becoming a nurse practitioner.<\/p>\n
“We just celebrated our first graduate of this program a few weeks ago and this was a big milestone for our organization as well as for our community,” said Lil Silvano, GHC’s president and CEO.<\/p>\n
In 2024, the Group Health Centre brought on three nurse practitioners, which allowed it to re-roster 2,500 patients from the Access Care Clinic.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Recently, Group Health\u00a0recruited two new nurse practitioners to work from the Access Care Clinic.<\/p>\n
“The Access Care Clinic was put in place to support those patients who lost their primary care provider on or after May 31. The ACC, as we call it, was not meant to be a long-term solution. However, it is a vital bridge while we work to rebuild capacity within our organization,” said Silvano.<\/p>\n
For the Group Health Centre, the past year has been focused\u00a0on restoring access to primary care.<\/p>\n
“The recruitment and retention of providers over the last year has allowed us to roster thousands of patients back to a primary care provider. At the Group Health Centre, we are committed to ensuring that every member of our community has access to primary care,” said Silvano.<\/p>\n
In addition to the primary care providers that have been recruited, Group Health has also recently brought on a number of specialists.<\/p>\n
“In the past year, we’ve successfully recruited a pediatrician who specializes in adolescent medicine, a family physician with expertise in psychiatry and addictions, an obstetrician gynecologist, a specialist in sports medicine, a specialist in pediatric mental health\u00a0and we have additional specialists already scheduled to join us in 2026,” said Stewart.<\/p>\n
Group Health has also added a\u00a0dedicated referral coordinator to assist with scheduling patient referrals.<\/p>\n
“This is an RPN who has been immensely helpful in the very tedious task of referring patients to specialists. She stays current on what providers will accept referrals across the province and for which conditions,” said\u00a0Dr. Melissa Hemy, who practices at Group Health.<\/p>\n
The re-rostering announcement came along with the presentation of Group Health’s most recent strategic plan.<\/p>\n
“Our new strategic plan reflects what’s important to us and what’s important to our community, and it places primary care access and patient roster at the heart of our mission,” said\u00a0Susan Vanagas-Cote, chair of Group Health’s\u00a0board of directors.<\/p>\n
“I want to thank our community for their patience and for their trust. We’re building stronger together and I think that we can confidently say the future of health care in Sault Ste. Marie is not just hopeful,\u00a0it’s actually happening,” said\u00a0Vanagas-Cote.<\/p>\n
An appeal was made during the press conference for an extension of the provincial funding to keep\u00a0the progress moving forward.<\/p>\n
“We continue to advocate for funding beyond March 2026, because we need more time to build capacity within our community,” said Silvano.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thousands of de-rostered Sault residents are receiving calls as the Group Health Centre has begun reconnecting them with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-195794","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}