LETTER: Where's the Family Health Team at SAH?

SooToday received the following letter to the editor from reader Erin Cardiff regarding the lack of a Family Health Team at the Sault Area Hospital:

With the clear provincial focus on Family Health Teams, I have to ask - where is the Family Health Team at Sault Area Hospital?

Is anyone planning it? Working on it? Why doesn't it already exist? Why didn't the purpose-built hospital start with that critical unit in mind?

Many "family doctors" already rotate through many jobs and departments within the hospital.

Everyone is stretched too thin, I very acutely understand, but hospital-based FHTs have so many benefits for all parties - including attracting new-to-practice doctors.

I cannot understand why there isn't an FHT at SAH, especially given both the shortage of care in the community at-large, and for patients being discharged from hospital, as was recently reported that more than one-quarter of patients leave the hospital without any path to follow-up care. How is this acceptable?

As a current patient of an FHT, I can tell you it's an ideal model for patients, even those with complex care needs. Less waiting, more access, centralized care - if there are any downsides, I haven't seen them from a patient perspective.

If any doctors/administrators have any differing ideas, it would be great to know what those are.

Many without care have no other solution but to land in the ER, or needing hospital admission because of lengthy, unaddressed illness. The expertise is already here to avoid all of this. How is it still happening?

– Erin Cardiff