Calling family doctors: Windsor, Ont. advocacy group appeals for return of local physician recruitment office

Tens of thousands of people in Windsor-Essex County are without a family doctor and a local group is advocating for the city and county to improve physician recruitment efforts and funding back to previous levels.

According to primary care data reports, 32,118 people in Windsor-Essex are not attached to a primary care provider. 45 per cent of those people live in neighborhoods with the lowest average incomes.

“And so now is as good a time as any to refocus physician recruitment,” said Jessica Sartori, the co-chair of ProsperUs.

ProsperUs is a group funded by the United Way to work towards positive outcomes for area youth through a cradle to career approach. The co-chairs, Sartori and Shelley Fellows, penned a letter to the city and county after hearing from residents that a lack of family doctors is a major barrier.

“Naturally, things like health when you're a child, being able to have access to a physician in your family, early diagnoses, those sort of official medical supports for children are going to be one of those things that are really, really important,” said Sartori.

According to ProsperUs, the Regional Physician Recruitment Office resulted in annual recruitment of 34 physicians between 2003 and 2019.

Over those years, the City of Windsor pumped $1.5 million into that effort to help attract doctors.

But as of January, the office is no longer funded by any municipality.

“I think it would be in the interest of residents and children to understand what's going to take its place,” said Sartori.

In recent years, city council decided to divert $24,000 in annual funding to the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry to retain grads. According to Andrew Daher, the city’s commissioner of human and health services, 77 per cent of graduates stayed in the community post-graduation.

“The money is going towards great use and we're seeing returns in our community as a result of that,” said Daher.

But with an aging doctor population and growing community, ProsperUs is looking to re-establish the recruitment office and steering committee, get more funding for it, create more spaces at the medical school as well as a new strategy to attract doctors to the region.

“We kind of have a ready-to-go committee I think from which collaborators could be gathered from,” said Sartori.

That request was supported not only by residents, but also local healthcare providers, the Leamington Chamber of Commerce, St. Clair College, the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit, Ontario Provincial Police, Children’s Aid Society, Hotel Dieu Grace Healthcare and Erie Shores Healthcare.

“We need to look to our university, our hospitals, our Ontario health teams, our family health teams, it's a really a community involvement,” said Daher, who noted the city doesn’t receive provincial funding for healthcare initiatives and feels the province should be at the table.

“We need to get all organizations involved in order to ensure that this is a win-win for the entire community,” Daher added.