North Wellington County gets $500,000-boost to healthcare services
The permanent funding will be for two nurse practioners, a registered practical nurse and a medical receptionist
CLIFFORD – A primary care team in Minto will be able to expand its number of patients after getting new permanent provincial funding.
Perth-Wellington MPP Matthew Rae announced at a press conference in Clifford Wednesday the Minto Mapleton Family Health Team (MMFHT) will receive over $560,000 to add four new staff members.
This funding will add two nurse practitioners, a registered practical nurse and a receptionist which will allow MMFHT to take on up to an additional 1,600 residents as patients.
“This is the first expansion of interprofessional primary care teams since their inception in 2005,” Rae said at a MMFHT location in Clifford. “This is long overdue.”
Shirley Borges, MMFHT executive director, said they currently have four nurse practitioners serving Minto and Mapleton with one of those serving Clifford. The first order of business with this funding will be to add a second nurse practitioner in Clifford as there is space at the office ready for one.
It hasn’t been decided where the other new hires will be located but it will be in Minto, Borges explained.
Minto councillor Ron Elliott said adding additional health care workers in the community is important as the town grows.
“As a matter of fact, last night we okayed buildings for 16 new families to be able to move into Clifford,” Elliott said. “There’s people that are trying to get their plans together, we have all kinds of people moving to our community…so Matt you picked the right time to come forward for us.”
When asked about how this will impact the ongoing issue of temporary emergency room closures in rural Ontario, as seen in Louise Marshall Hospital in nearby Mount Forest on multiple occasions in 2023, Rae said people who were without primary care prior won’t need to go to the hospital for those needs.
“Individuals who don’t have a primary care provider are going to those hospitals to get care because they need a prescription filled or their kid is sick,” Rae said. “They won’t have to go to the Palmerston ER and so it relieves some of the burden on our ER nurses and our doctors.”
Borges wasn’t sure how many people in the area are without primary care, calling it a moving target, but explained two years ago MMFHT lost a physician and they weren’t able to attach every one of their patients to another.
“Those folks now either have found another provider somewhere or they visit our emergency department,” Borges said, adding every day they get people calling to get on waiting lists even from people who live far away. “My sense is, as the community grow we will continue to have to recruit including our physician recruitment.”
“There’s way more work to do, this is just a good first step,” Rae added.
This announcement is part of a larger provincial investment of $110 million which a press release stated can connect up to 328,000 people to a primary care provider.
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