By: Cynthia Davis, President and CEO, Lakeridge Health
The shortage of family doctors is one of Ontario's most important health-care challenges. It's estimated that 1.8 million people in the province don't have a family doctor and another 1.7 million have a family doctor over the age of 65.
A comprehensive program to address this challenge is now underway in Durham Region, with promising results.
The program is led by Lakeridge Health, one of Ontario's largest health systems. It incorporates Durham Region's five major hospitals, a long-term care home, one of the province's largest mental health providers, and a range of specialized medical clinics. With a team of roughly 8,000 staff and physicians, it delivers one of Ontario's broadest portfolios of health-care services.
The primary care solutions underway in Durham Region are part of an aggressive strategy of health system integration – connecting all services, from primary and community care to hospitals and specialized clinics to home and long-term care, so they work together as one.
A large, diverse organization like Lakeridge Health has the capacity to support interconnected health care at a regional scale.
We work closely with the Durham Ontario Health Team, which functions as a connector, helping to build partnerships that include allied services such as pharmacists, as well as family physicians and specialists.
Partnerships have been established in the primary care, public health, paramedicine, long-term care, and community care sectors, enabling one of the province's most advanced and coordinated regional responses to COVID-19 and other viral outbreaks.
Together, we've developed a regional network of Cold, Flu and COVID Care Clinics, a COVID-19 Therapeutic Clinic, a Virtual Urgent Care Clinic, and capacity for coordinated rapid vaccine rollouts.
We provide multi-media communications directing primary and community care providers to available supports, and patients to appropriate care.
We're now building the framework to establish a regional network of family health-care resources that are fully connected to acute and community care services.
The network will be based on the establishment of new clinics and strengthened partnerships with existing primary care clinics. All primary care providers, including those who practice independently, will be invited to join the network to gain full access to multidisciplinary support and resources, without changing their practice.
The electronic medical record currently used by all hospitals will be offered to all primary care settings to create a fully integrated digital health system, a first for Ontario.
We've already been working with numerous clinics in Durham Region over the last three years to improve community and hospital connections and support.
A Department of Family and Community Medicine has been established at Lakeridge Health to coordinate development of the regional primary care network.
To address the need for more family doctors, we've established an innovative primary care training and education partnership – the first of its kind in Canada – with Queen's University School of Medicine.
The Queen's-Lakeridge Health MD Family Medicine Program identifies individuals who are interested in family practice at the beginning of their medical education. It offers a direct pathway into primary care, including exposure to the full range of community-based health-care professionals in a highly supportive team-based practice environment.
Students will be fully prepared to begin their practice in Durham Region upon graduation.
The Lakeridge Health Education and Research Network Centre, an existing education and research facility, will evolve into a satellite campus to support this program.
All of these initiatives are helping us recruit family physicians and other primary care providers.
Health-care professionals want to be part of a team. They understand the importance of streamlined connections to specialists and allied services. They want to be able to rely on colleagues for ongoing support and to provide excellent care for their patients when they need a break. They want a workplace in which people have balance and flexibility, stable incomes, and the ability to focus on patient care.
We're building the collaborative, interconnected workplaces that health-care professionals are looking for.
Our primary care strategy will, over time, increase our regional primary care capacity and improve access for all, including currently underserved populations.
It will improve patient experience, through simplified referrals, seamless transitions between providers, high-quality care, and easier navigation throughout the health-care journey.
Our primary care challenges are complex, and we believe that solutions must ultimately involve a comprehensive systems approach. We also believe that now is the right time for broad system change. Our primary care providers have endured the exceptional stresses of recent years and are ready for truly supportive health system integration. In fact, it is long overdue.