Chatham-Kent Health Alliance’s (CKHA) physician recruitment efforts and community partnership supports aims to successfully transition patients from hospital to community.
In response to a shortage of primary care in the community, CKHA established a Nurse Practitioner Clinic at the Sydenham Campus, which was funded through its Emergency Department budget.
Although located in Wallaceburg, the clinic served patients from across Chatham-Kent.
To address the gap in access to primary care and to reduce unnecessary visits to the Emergency Department, the NP Clinic opened as one strategy to help patients access care. Since the clinic’s inception, the local primary care environment has changed drastically, with thriving Family Health Teams (FHTs) across the region as well as a Community Health Centre with offices in Chatham, Wallaceburg and Walpole Island.
In 2012, CKHA’s Nurse Practitioner Clinic had over 1,200 registered patients that had complex care needs but had previously had no connection to a primary care provider.
With new or expanding FHTs across the region, CKHA successfully transitioned over 1,100 of these patients to more appropriate primary care providers in the community within two years.
“CKHA’s successful recruitment of a number of new family physicians to Wallaceburg has created additional capacity and access to primary care in the community,” said Willi Kirenko, Vice President & CNE, in a press release. “It is our hope and belief that this new capacity will allow us to support these patients but also, to address long standing challenges of access to a family doctor or nurse practitioner in the community. This truly is a success story for our community.”
Over the past two years, CKHA has successfully worked with patients and other provider groups to find suitable placements in other programs, ensuring continued access to primary care for the remaining patients who were registered with the Clinic.
With a number of community-based healthcare partners, whose mandate it is to provide primary care and with capacity to accept new patients, it is no longer appropriate for CKHA to duplicate this service within the hospital.
Earlier this month, CKHA notified its remaining patients now fewer than 100 individuals that the Chatham-Kent Family Health Team (CK-FHT), with offices in Wallaceburg and Dresden, had agreed to accept them as patients. “While this is a positive story for the broader community, we recognize that the transition to a new provider will be difficult for some patients,” offered Kirenko.
While CKHA has made arrangements for patients to be accepted by the CK-FHT, it remains a patient’s choice as to where they access care and their responsibility to connect with these providers directly. CKHA continues to encourage these patients and others in the community in need of primary care support to contact the CK-FHT or Health Care Connect.
