The head of a family health team in Chatham-Kent is warning of an impending crisis in primary health care due to ongoing challenges with recruiting and retaining health care professionals.
Denise Waddick, the executive director of the Thamesview Family Health Team, said the wage gap between primary care and other healthcare sectors is growing rapidly. She said years of frozen wages across primary care has contributed to a dwindling number of healthcare professionals such as nurse practitioners, registered nurses, practical nurses, occupational therapists, and respiratory therapists.
“We’ve been waiting for a number of years for our staff to receive any type of wage increase and it’s been quite some time. Where other areas of health care have receive increases in their wages, like hospitals for example, for primary care and community health care, we’re still waiting,” she said.
Waddick added that the majority of positions have a wage gap of around 20 per cent below market value.
“It certainly puts pressure on us to fill those positions when we’re competing against similar positions that are being paid significantly higher from other government-funded healthcare organizations,” she said. “If we’re not able to increase salaries, it will certainly have an impact on our ability to be able to fill positions and be able to continue to provide primary care to our community. It’s been quite challenging.”
While the Ontario government recently announced a $110 million investment to connect more than 300,000 people to primary care teams, Waddick said this won’t address the pay disparity.
“Obviously investing in primary care is extremely important. However, in addition… they still also need to address the health human resource crisis in primary and community care,” she said.
Waddick said these challenges have been compounded by the municipality’s recent decision to cease funding for the recruitment of family doctors.
Over the past four years, the municipality provided $100,000 to the Chatham-Kent Physician Recruitment and Retention Task Force each year to support the recruitment family doctors. However, Waddick said CK Council did not allocate any funding for 2024.
“Now we’re left looking for alternative funding that’s sustainable that can help us continue to recruit physicians. We’re competing against other communities that are providing significantly large incentives… which is very difficult for us to compete with,” she said.
There are currently more than 20,000 Chatham-Kent residents who do not have a primary-care provider. According to Waddick, the municipality will need to recruit an additional 35-40 family doctors in the coming years to meet the current need and to account for physicians nearing retirement.
Without funding to recruit family doctors, Waddick said the municipality will be left in dire straits.
She said the Physician Recruitment and Retention Task Force is currently exploring alternate sources of funding to address the growing shortage of family doctors.
