LETTER: Saultites 'need to come together' to tackle doctor shortage

SooToday received the following letter to the editor from Dr. Saara Rawn, a rheumatologist at the Group Health Centre.

To my fellow Saultites:

The Canadian health care system is designed to be dependent on primary care. The role of primary care is to ensure we are vaccinated, have access to cancer screening, receive treatment for common and chronic ailments, refer us when specialist care is required, and ensure specialist recommendations are implemented.

I am a specialist who provides care to patients with primary care providers as well as those without. This perspective allows me to see the clear advantages to having a primary care provider:

• Without primary care, people flood to our already overburdened Emergency Department.
• Without primary care, curable diseases are missed.
• Without primary care, specialists quickly become overwhelmed with screening non-complex patients who could be cared for in a family medicine setting.
• Without primary care, patients lose their advocates who coordinate their journey through the healthcare system.

Other parts of the system fail when there is a lack of access to primary care. For example, specialists cannot take on newly acute patients if they have no one to partner with to ensure stable patients receive routine monitoring. If a patient does not have a primary care physician, who will manage a new diagnosis of high blood pressure or diabetes? Is the emergency department the appropriate place to get routine medications reordered or dosages adjusted?

The number of people in Ontario without primary care is steadily increasing.

As a specialist working in Sault Ste. Marie, I am proud to say that I work at the Group Health Centre. This unique model of health care delivery is the perfect home for my Rheumatology practice because it allows for same day investigations, as well as supporting collaboration with primary care providers and other specialists. I am supported by a complex network which includes but is not limited to nurses, administrators, clerical staff, custodians, and information technologists as well as integrated information technology (the electronic chart). This model of care is unique to Sault Ste. Marie. Many regions in Canada and the world have looked at this model for inspiration.

If our community values the primary care providers we have in Sault Ste. Marie who work at the Group Health Centre, Superior Family Health, or are independent providers, we need to come together to support them now. We need to tell the government to advocate for the primary care providers in our community who are struggling to stay afloat. We must tell the government that it is our priority to create an environment to attract and develop more primary care providers to help people who don’t have a primary care provider.

I urge each one of you who want to keep their current primary care provider or who want a primary care provider, to write the following to our local MPP:

1) Please support our current primary care providers at the Group Health Centre, Superior Family Health, and in independent practice so we do not lose even more practitioners to burn out.

2) Please invest in world-renowned models of health care such as the Group Health Centre to allow us to grow and adapt in order to increase primary care access in the Sault.

Our voices are stronger together.

Sincerely,
Dr. Saara Rawn, Rheumatologist,
Sault Ste. Marie