MINDEMOYA—Due to a shortage of doctors, the Mindemoya Hospital emergency department may be closed on several days throughout the month of October.
“Due to a shortage of available doctors, Manitoulin Health Centre (MHC) will only be operating one of its two emergency departments for several days in October,” said Paula Fields, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of MHC.
A press release explains, “The Little Current emergency department will remain open 24/7 while the Mindemoya emergency department will be closed on several days throughout October. Closure dates will be shared publicly as they are confirmed.”
“All other hospital operations in Mindemoya will be operating normally. Residents may call Telehealth at 1-866-797-0000 for health care advice. Residents on Manitoulin Island will continue to receive excellent emergency healthy services by either calling 9-1-1 or attending MHC’s other emergency department in Little Current.”
“We are working diligently to limit the closures,” said Ms. Fields. “More details will be released closer to the closure dates. We truly apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”
“We hope we can get more locums to help out so that we don’t have to close the emergency room at all,” said Dr. Maurianne Reade. “Essentially, when the province came up with the recent decision on those hospitals who qualify for additional doctors for emergency rooms, they used a complicated formula to do this, with one part heavily weighted to how much work we’ve done in the office. Because we are short of doctors and had been advised to prioritize keeping the hospital open, of course we haven’t been in the general practice office as much as we’d like. The metrics heavily favoured teams who could see a lot of patients through the office, as well as the emergency room. Our community suffers because we don’t have enough doctors to do well in the formula, so we received a poor result in the complement review. It makes it impossible (for Mindemoya Hospital) to recruit new physicians.”
“Even with 7.5 doctors here it is not sustainable,” said Dr. Reade, pointing out for Little Current the ministry more than doubled its doctor complement. “It makes it more appealing to work at Little Current. Why would these new doctors come to us?”
“It would take 10-11 people to handle the work demands that we have been doing in the Mindemoya emergency room,” said Dr. Reade. “At a system level it is tragic that the committee didn’t realize the work that needs to be done in our community. But (the committee) haven’t realized the work that is being done and we’ve been given an inappropriate complement so we’re feeling doomed.”
“Yes, the workload has been ridiculous,” stated Dr. Reade. “Our doctors are working three to four weekends in a row in the ER, and this is after working during the week. We don’t want to have physicians on the verge of collapse. I would say we have made decisions to prevent this collapse from happening. We all realize we can’t keep going on the pace we have been.”
Ms. Fields said, “We are still hopeful of avoiding any closure, and we are hoping to have enough locum (doctor) resources and hoping that people will step forward.”
“We are not releasing the dates of the closures until it is closer to the date to avoid any confusion for the community,” said Ms. Fields. “Since the initial public announcement, we have been successful in covering some of the dates with locum physicians and are hopeful that more of the vacant shifts will be covered.”
“This is a system problem that many colleagues and hospitals are facing across the province,” continued Ms. Fields. “There is a real need for more doctors, more nurses, and physicians. Human health resources are suffering system wide.”
Mindemoya Hospital currently has 4.75 physician positions filled and has rarely been able to keep six doctors over the past several years. Since the late 1990s, Mindemoya Hospital has had funding for six full-time physicians, a number that has remained unchanged despite growing patient volumes and increased complexity from an aging population, along with opioid and mental health crisis that increased during the pandemic.
In Northern Ontario, the burden of the doctor shortage is felt much more acutely than in other parts of the province. Rural doctors are responsible for both primary care in their family practices and emergency care in the hospitals.
Dr. Reade pointed out the province announced last week that they will continue to provide top up funding for emergency rooms through the Temporary Locum Program, until the end of March. “It should make it easier to recruit doctors and locums. It’s a glimmer of hope. Its part of the problem but we also need to hire more full-time people. We (full-time physicians) have been filling the gaps for a long time.”
“We have seen Northern Ontario emergency room closures over the past few months and years, due to a lack of physicians and locums. Even in Toronto a lot of patients can’t find family doctors. We are seeing shifts in health care, although the number of clinicians has actually increased in health care the past 10 years, there has been a shift in how the resources have been used,” said Dr. Steve Cooper.
“Years ago, doctors did not have to do emergency room care, or palliative care, and there are much bigger numbers of dealing with mental health these days,” said Dr. Cooper. “I’m hopeful the ministry’s announcement of an extension of funding for locums will help. It is going to be a challenging few weeks on Manitoulin Island. It is critical that Manitoulin has the two emergency rooms open, it is critically important. We are working with all the physicians at both sites, our recruiter Craig Matheson, and administration to try and fill the gaps. Hopefully we will be able to fill some of them, but I will be surprised if we can fill all of them.”
“We are grateful for the understanding and support of the communities our employees and physicians who have been working with us to minimize risk and ensure the safety of our community during the potential closures,” said Ms. Fields.
