(September 18, 2024) By: Ken Kellar, Fort Frances Times<\/p>\n
A network of community organizations across Ontario are using their platform to amplify the critical health care situations being faced by municipalities in the Rainy River District and call for action from the provincial government.<\/p>\n
In a video press conference held via Zoom on Friday, September 13, 2024, the Ontario Health Coalition, a network of approximately 400 grassroots community organizations representing \u201cvirtually all areas\u201d of the province joined with Rainy River mayor Deb Ewald and local CUPE 4807 president and paramedic Malcolm Daley to bring wider attention to the shortage of doctors and paramedics being experienced in the region, specifically Rainy River and Emo, respectively.<\/p>\n
Ontario Health Coalition executive director Natalie Mehra led the video press conference, calling what is happening in the district \u201cvery, very serious.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of the physicians in Rainy River have announced that they are resigning,\u201d Mehra explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re leaving, two of the three at the end of September, and the other will stay till November to provide some coverage, but that\u2019s it. So that\u2019s all of the physicians in town. They provide the services at the Rainy River clinic and at the hospital in that community\u2026 we\u2019re not trying to alarm the community unduly, but obviously this is a very, very serious threat to access to health care and people\u2019s health in Rainy River and the region around it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn addition to that, they have announced the closure of the paramedic service from Emo because of a critical staffing shortage,\u201d Mehra continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this point, the distances are really ominous. It\u2019s at least 50 plus kilometres from Rainy River to Emo. That service covers the whole region around Emo, and then from Rainy River to Fort Frances, which is the next hospital where people would have to go if the Emerg department were to close in Rainy River, is more than an hour drive in good weather. It is alarming, the distance between Rainy River and any other service that people would need to access.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mehra noted that the province of Ontario has already announced it has extended funding for locums to help provide care at Rainy River hospital. Riverside Health Care, the organization responsible for managing the hospitals in the district, has also said the hospital will be covered through November through this funding. Mehra said this action from the government only pushes the problem back to the end of November, after which \u201cthere is no plan.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ewald echoed Mehra\u2019s statement of the situation being serious in the municipality, noting the town has found itself in a \u201cvery, very terrible situation,\u201d and that, despite bringing her concerns to southern Ontario when she attended the Association of Ontario Municipalities (AMO) annual meeting in August, she hasn\u2019t seen much in terms of results.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a slow, slow thing, and unfortunately, we\u2019re a small area,\u201d Ewald said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a sparse population. In terms of the whole district is only about 21,000 people, and the hospital in Rainy River actually covers two first nations to the north, the townships of Lake of the Woods, Dawson and Morley, as well as the town of Rainy River. It\u2019s a vast area of travel to go anywhere. In the wintertime it can take up to three hours to go from Morson to Fort Frances hospital if the ambulance needs to take them there\u2026 It\u2019s just a terrible, terrible thing that\u2019s happened, and there needs to be some significant changes, because otherwise people are going to die. It\u2019s that dire.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ewald noted she was scheduled to have a meeting with the Ministry of Health at some point that Friday, or possibly Monday, to hear more form them about continuing services at the hospital and clinic beyond the departure of the current doctors. She noted that people in the community are now scared that in a situation that they need emergency care, there will be none to be found.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a very senior population in this community as well, and people are afraid,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re nervous. It\u2019s just not a good situation. These people have lived in this area their whole lives, they\u2019ve paid their fair share of taxes and all of a sudden, when they\u2019re in their old age, healthcare is kind of being pulled out from underneath them. They need sustainable healthcare that\u2019s going to be there for them when they need it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Daley was the next to speak during the conference, and he noted that the area is suffering from a significant lack of paramedics, and that the impacts are now being felt throughout the district.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are just at the tail end of an ongoing struggle right now with staffing, and we\u2019ve reached a crisis point,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve framed it in the past as, we\u2019re no longer treading water and we\u2019re starting to drown. Our paramedic service, to speak specifically to that, has had, at least multi-years now, very, very limited recruitment and retention strategies. No new paramedics are really joining the workforce, while existing paramedics are exiting, either to seek career opportunities in the same field elsewhere, or to leave the career altogether. In the region specifically\u2026 our access to health care has never really been lower, and I say that as a health care worker representative and a citizen, that the access is ever-decreasing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Daley said that staffing shortages in the district are the \u201cprimary and major pressing concerns,\u201d which has led to the decision to temporarily relocate services from the Emo ambulance base to the bases in Rainy River and Fort Frances in order to sustain coverage for the region. In a self-defeating reality, the increased hours local paramedics are currently working to sustain services are leading to more burnout and exits from the career in the region, exacerbating the problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have this situation where our current staffing levels and our infrastructure isn\u2019t designed to meet the needs of the community, and as a result, we\u2019re having further staffing crisis due to burnout,\u201d Daley said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur paramedics are putting in astronomical amounts of overtime, up to 50% greater than full time work hours annually, and they\u2019re starting to fail and to falter. They\u2019re doing this to keep the services available, but our existing workforce is just not sufficient to maintain the services that our communities need.\u201d<\/p>\n
Where the northern parts of the province once used to rely on an overflow of paramedics from more southern regions in Ontario, that overflow has disappeared as more and more job openings were made in other parts of the province, where they are experiencing their own staffing shortages.<\/p>\n
Also on Friday\u2019s call was Jules Tupker, the co-chair of the Thunder Bay Health Coalition. Tupker noted that even though his coalition primarily deals with the Thunder Bay area, they have heard more and more frequently from the more western parts of the province about the struggles facing health care in those areas. In Tupker\u2019s eyes, the buck stops with the provincial government.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been getting more and more input from communities around northwestern Ontario, and we\u2019re looking at at the situation, and clearly the situation in Rainy River and Emo are two areas that we\u2019re very, very concerned about,\u201d Tupker said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just unbelievable that the government is allowing this to happen\u2026 this is not just all of a sudden that happened last week or last month, the problems have been building up for quite a long time. As Thunder Bay Health Coalition, we\u2019ve been raising this issue for a long time with the government, no response from the government at all other than say \u2018we are planning on improving the health care in Northwestern Ontario.\u2019 Mr. Greg Rickford, the MPP for Kenora, keeps on promising, \u2018things are going to change. We\u2019re going to make things better.\u2019 It doesn\u2019t happen. It\u2019s just not happening, and all we get are empty promises, day in and day out. And now you see what has happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mehra echoed Tupker in calling on the province to step up and address the situation, charging them to provide solutions that are more than \u201cband-aids\u201d that only push the problems further down the road by providing temporary relief.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a major problem,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople need to decide about their housing, where they live. If you\u2019re getting elderly, you need to be near a hospital that has an emergency department. The distances are too far to be able to travel, even in summer, let alone in winter, in northern Ontario, to another community to access these services, and they cannot continue to simply have a last minute stopgap measure that isn\u2019t adequate to stabilize the services. We need a real answer from the Ford government about what they\u2019re going to do to stabilize the services, because people\u2019s lives, their very lives, are at risk in this situation.\u201d<\/p>\n