Politicians are being pressured to prioritize the creation of a nurse practitioner-led clinic in Orillia.
Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux has been lobbying for the service on behalf of local nurse practitioners. She recently wrote a letter to Mayor Steve Clarke, outlining “a solution-based strategy to improve access to primary care by implementing” a nurse practitioner-led clinic in the city.
“As mayor of the City of Orillia, you are very aware that we are navigating challenging times and coping with stressors in every community,” she wrote. “As nurse practitioners and community members who have worked on the front lines of the global pandemic we believe the time is right to collaboratively come together to raise our community up.”
More than 3,200 people in the Orillia area do not have family physicians, and it’s “overloading emergency rooms,” Wesley-Esquimaux told OrilliaMatters.
“If they’re going to the emergency room, they’re often going for things that could be dealt with by a nurse practitioner.”
Many don’t have a way to get to nurse practitioner-led clinics out of town, including the one on Line 4 in Oro-Medonte, she added.
Dr. Peter Daniel, lead physician with the Orillia Family Health Organization, has written to the Ministry of Health to show his support for a nurse practitioner-led clinic in town.
He said there is “a very significant need for primary care providers” in the area and noted no family physicians are taking on new patients in the area. The list of people without family physicians “is growing to very concerning levels,” he said.
“People without local primary care providers have no option in this area, other than to go to the emergency department, as the after-hours clinics are only available to those who are enrolled with the local family health team,” Daniel wrote. “In addition many patients, who are not considered unattached, have physicians as far away as Toronto because they are not able enrol with a local (primary care provider), and as such are not counted in the unattached patient metrics.”
He pointed out Orillia has a “higher-than-average marginalized population” that struggles with issues from income to addiction and mental illness.
The nurse practitioners behind the drive for a clinic in Orillia are Janet Greaves and Cathy Suppa.
“As nurse practitioners who have been on the front lines of the global pandemic, we believe the time is right to explore the benefits this model of care can provide to Orillia residents,” they wrote in a letter.
Nurse practitioner-led clinics “bridge gaps in the delivery of primary care,” they added, noting there are 25 of them in the province.
They said a clinic in Orillia would register 2,800 unattached patients to address chronic diseases, including mental illness and addiction.
“Our goal is to improve community vitality, wellness, and prosperity by using a population- and needs-based approach that supports equality, opportunity, and well-being for all,” they wrote. “We will serve populations that have traditionally faced barriers in accessing health services because of underlying conditions and indicators that determine a person’s health status such as income, education, employment, food security, housing, social exclusion/inclusion, gender, race, and disability.”
As support grows for a nurse practitioner-led clinic in Orillia, Wesley-Esquimaux has reached out to a number of provincial ministries as well as opposition politicians, stressing the urgency of bringing this service to town.
“This is important and we want to see it go soon,” she said.
City council referred her letter to the mayor’s office, which will provide a letter of support.
“That’s excellent. That’s an important step,” Wesley-Esquimaux said. “It’s going to take a lot of voices.”
