The Regional Physician Recruitment Office says efforts to bring Windsor-Essex on par with the national average are working — but there's more work to be done.
That's according to Head of Regional Recruitment Joan Mavrinac, who pointed out Maclean's Magazine had declared Windsor-Essex the most under-served community in Canada in 2003.
Mavrinac says when they went to work 14 years ago — the region trailed the national average of 187 doctors to 100,000 patients by 78. She presented a progress report to Essex County Council Wednesday night.
Mavrinac says recruitment is working but more needs to be done in @EssexCountyON. #cklw pic.twitter.com/TMc2KKgR5t
— Gord Bacon (@baconAM800) January 18, 2018
She tells AM800 News — for the most part — the area's dug itself out of a deep hole, but it’s still "knee-deep" and there’s more work to be done.
"The country right now, it's 212 physicians per 100,000 people, in Ontario I think it's 203, for Erie St. Clair LHIN it's 152," she says. "So you can tell we've got a distance to travel yet, even to get to those kinds of averages."
Health-care professionals stepped up and took on more patients to make up for shortcomings; something she says adds a new hurdle as physicians retire.
"A lot of those older physicians felt very compelled to accept great numbers of patients because there was such a great need. There have been several that have retired in their 70's and their active patient base was like 3,800 to 3,900 patients," Mavrinac says. "These are enormous practices, not ideal in any situation."
She says the ideal patient-load is between 1,500 and 2,000 per doctor — meaning Windsor-Essex is going to need to replace retirees at an exponential rate.
"As each of those senior physicians retires, they're potentially orphaning 3,000 patients, and not all of those patients would be taken up by a single recruit," she says. "We need to recruit 1.5 to 2 family physicians to replace every retiring physician."
According to the report, of the 462 family doctors throughout Windsor-Essex 89 are 65 years old and older — more than 513 physicians have been brought into the region since 2003.