MANITOULIN—One of the ways the Ontario government can help to improve health care in Northern Ontario and throughout the province is by having the province speed up the process to licence more foreign-trained physicians by creating a practice-ready assessment program to get internationally trained doctors to underserved Northern communities.
“The more trained doctors the government can help get here in Ontario, and especially the North, the better,” stated Dr. Stephen Cooper, who is district nine chair of the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) and chief of staff of the Manitoulin Health Centre. “There are several physicians in Ontario that are trained in other countries. By allowing them to practice in Northern Ontario communities it would alleviate a lot of the physician shortages.”
Dr. Cooper said that Northern Ontario experienced a shortfall of 325 family doctors, psychiatrists, pediatricians and other health care specialists last year, and this situation is only getting worse, with a shortage of 350 this year.
“We advocate for improving the health care system, and increasing the number of workers in the North would definitely go towards that,” said Dr. Cooper. “Already, we are identifying deficits in health care workers, and challenges in training doctors and nurses and having them come up north to practice. A family doctor in Vaughan, for instance, might focus his practice on dealing with chronic disease patients, but in the North we also have to deal with working in emergency departments, delivering babies, providing palliative care; we have a wider scope of practice because there are less of us (doctors/physicians) in the North.”
Dr. Cooper was among OMA representatives who made a presentation last week to the province’s standing committee on finance and economic affairs as part of the province’s pre-budget consultations to improve Northern Ontario health care.
“I presented along with Dr. Stephen Viherjoki, the Dryden District OMA chair,” said Dr. Cooper.
“Along with speeding up the process to licence doctors’ physicians from other countries to practice here, (OMA) also wants to create a centralized wait list for procedures with a referral and triage management system for surgeries, and allow diagnostic services and equipment to be provided to long-term care homes to alleviate pressure on hospitals. This would all help the health system. We are trying to get away from just going to hospitals. It’s about alleviating the wait time for primary care, community specialists, home care and hospitals.”
“Before COVID the calls were for no more hallway medicine, with people having to wait to get into emergency,” Dr. Cooper continued. “This is still valid, but people have to wait a long period of time in line for diagnostic care, like MRIs, and ultrasound which is a real concern on Manitoulin Island.”
“Say you are a contractor and you have a very bad hip, you will wait at least three months for an MRI for a hip replacement. Those type of cases are having to be bumped back,” said Dr. Cooper.
Dr. Cooper added that while he feels the government is listening to the OMA, “I think they are listening and hearing from their constituents that are saying they need to move forward on these improvements.”
