Blind River loses two doctors, leaving some 1,500 people without primary care
The news comes a month after a Sault Ste. Marie primary care center dropped 10,000 patients
Two doctors with the Huron Shores Family Health Team in Blind River told their patients they will be closing up their practice in June.
This leaves 1,500 people scrambling to find a new doctor in an area already hard-hit by a doctor shortage.
For Craig Matheson, the recruitment coordinator for the North Shore Health Network, the departures add to an already challenging job.
In addition to recruiting physicians for the north shore of Lake Huron, he's also working to attract talent to the Espanola and Manitoulin Island areas.
"In the region I coordinate we are looking for 20 full-time physicians. Twenty-two is… let's say… it just adds on," he said.
"There are a lot of things you can't control. I mean, especially when physicians leave for just personal preferences," he added. "There are those internal things working against you."
Matheson says an effective recruitment strategy is to work with people native to the area as they graduate medical school, and ensure "they're repatriated back to their home communities."
He's been following graduating classes for years now, and successfully recruited two physicians using that approach.
He doesn't know if the roles will be filled once the two Blind River doctors leave in the summer.
"I'd hate to count my chickens before they hatch, but I do have some promising recruit options coming out of our graduating classes this June," he said.
Primary care physicians leaving has an impact on emergency room services
The CEO of the North Shore Health Network, Tim Vine, worries the departures will have an impact on the wider emergency room system.
"Obviously that puts increased pressure on us as a hospital because of the shared responsibility in rural places with primary care physicians also doing duty in the emergency department," he said.
"The nature of rural medicine is one where we ask physicians to do a lot. I think sometimes we ask them to do too much," he added.
He says some 5,000 people rely on the North Shore Health Network's primary care and emergency room services.
He would encourage people impacted by the departures to call the family health team and see if there are other services or options that are available to them.
He says when people access primary care through the emergency department, there's always a risk that they're not getting the appropriate level of care.