Local Residents Line Up in the Cold to Get a Family Doctor

In recent days and weeks, the South Bruce Grey area has been inundated with snowstorms, frequent squalls and flurries, cold temperatures and high winds. It is, after all, January in Ontario and most local people would choose to stay warm at home and avoid long drives in dangerous conditions. But on Wednesday, driven by the hope of securing a family physician, in some cases for the first time in years, many residents of Grey and Bruce counties braved the conditions and drove to Walkerton to stand in freezing temperatures and driving snow in the hope of being rostered for primary health care.

Walkerton has been fortunate enough to secure a new family physician who will move to this rural area and open a practice. Congratulations to the Physician Recruitment team and welcome to Dr Currie and his wife, who is also a doctor and who will soon join him in this community to open a practice of her own.

Grey Bruce has 45,000 people who do not have a family physician and word got around quickly that people would be able to line up on Wednesday morning to secure a place on his roster or on the wait list for his wife’s practice. Doors at the Legion were scheduled to open at 9 am and the first people began to arrive in the parking lot at 2 am. Others gathered through the morning, from Kincardine, from Owen Sound, from Chesley and Hanover and many other local communities, waiting patiently for their opportunity to get a family doctor. One woman who was there commented on the behaviour of the people on the line who were patient with each other, helping to save someone’s place when nature called or when there was a coffee run. In rural Ontario, especially in adverse conditions, people understand the need to help and respect their friends and neighbours.

Dr Currie was able to accept the first 500 people onto his roster and the next 500 were added to a wait list which will be assumed by his wife when she arrives at some point in the near future.

So, there is some good news about health care in the South Bruce Grey area. Good on the one hand and not so good on the other. At the beginning of the day, we had 45,000 waiting for primary care and at the end of the day we had 44,000 still waiting. Those people are called orphans, and they are often forced to seek help in the local ERs for conditions that would normally be diagnosed and treated by a family doctor. In the absence of primary health care, they have nowhere else to go.

So, okay, no big deal…you just drive to the nearest local ER and get treatment for yourself, or perhaps your infant child, or maybe your grandparent. But wait a minute! This region falls under the South Bruce Grey Health Centre, responsible for four local hospitals, two of which are not open full time. In Chesley and Durham you will not receive healthcare at the local hospital unless you arrive during weekday business hours. There is no weekend service at all in Chesley and no evening service at either one. If you or your loved one have some kind of condition that requires a hospital stay, in Durham at least, you are going to have to be shipped off to some other community with a hospital because Durham’s inpatient beds were all moved out at the command of the local Board of Directors.
The community has objected to this decision and since last April they are still awaiting a court decision on the matter.

Okay then, let’s go to Plan B. Let’s drive to one of the larger hospitals in the area, perhaps Brightshores in Owen Sound or Hanover. Both have ERs which are commonly overcrowded with long wait times. When the smaller hospitals are not fully operational, they cannot deflect patients from these larger hospitals as they did in the past. So, you go there, and you sit and wait…and wait….and wait. The Owen Sound Sun Times recently published an article entitled, “Brightshores Issues Warning About Long Wait Times at Emergency Departments”. This winter there
are a number of contagious respiratory illnesses, and you will find yourself in a waiting room filled with potential contamination. Masks are helpful, but you worry still about what diseases you may be exposed to.

So, you get the picture. The Healthcare system is broken and there is a feeling provincewide that rural areas have gotten the dirty end of the stick. In a recent provincial tour of rural communities to ask about their concerns, we were told repeatedly that people feel that rural Ontario has been abandoned. It isn’t just in Grey Bruce: it is provincewide.

Is there money to fix Healthcare? Yes, there is money, but it is being spent on other “priorities” like spas for the rich, unnecessary elections, highways that eat up precious farmland, beer in the corner store, and so many others. And with a provincial economy that focuses mainly on centralizing public services in large urban areas, the rural communities are not wrong to feel they are not getting their fair share.

Primary health care is the gateway to access the intricacies of the whole system. Your family doctor who knows your history and your condition should be in effect, the quarterback who analyses the situation, decides what needs to happen, involves other players as necessary for a successful play and starts the action. As of today in Bruce Grey, we are so pleased that 1,000 people have been able to get a family doctor, reducing their healthcare anxieties and being able to receive the help they need when they need it. But we have another 44,000 people waiting to get in the game.

Brenda Scott

Co-Chair, Grey Bruce Health Coalition