Municipality of Chatham-Kent Council approved the creation of a family physician incentive reserve at their Monday, December 9, 2024 meeting.
South Kent Councillor Anthony Ceccacci entered the successful motion, which included the following action items:
– Establish a Primary Care Family Physician Incentive reserve, of $140,000 annually or $420,000 total for the remainder of the 2024-2027 Multi-Year Budget, funded initially by a transfer of $420,000 from the Strategic Reserve and base funding be considered by the next Council in the 2028-2031 Multi- Year Budget.
– The Primary Care Family Physician Incentive reserve be made available to Primary Care organizations in Chatham-Kent (CKFHT, CKCHC, TVFHT, TDFHT) for the purpose of providing practice incentives to newly established primary care physicians in Chatham-Kent, for up to $25,000 per physician recruit or, in exceptional circumstances, directly to new physicians who establish solo practices in Chatham-Kent outside of the four named primary care organizations above.
– The Primary Care Family Physician Incentive reserve may also be made available to those same organizations to apply for up to $20,000 once every five years, as a matched grant to support capital funding or new builds/renovations that are for the express purpose of expanding clinical space to accommodate new physician offices in primary care across Chatham-Kent.
– The CAO and General Manager of Development Services, or their delegates, be authorized to review and approve applications for grants from this reserve, and that the CAO and General Manager of Development Services be authorized to enter into appropriate agreements with each of the primary care organizations to facilitate the transfer of funds in the above circumstances, and for a process for partial pay-back of physician recruitment grants for services of less than five years given in alignment with the current practice of the physician task force, such agreements to be satisfactory to the Director, Legal Services.
– For the Municipality of Chatham-Kent, as both a partner to the Chatham-Kent Ontario Health Team, and community leader, continue to support the work of the Physician Recruitment and Retention Task Force across its departments where appropriate to do so, in particular through the departments of Community Attraction and Promotion, Economic Development (Small Business Centre), and Communication departments in effort to increase the number of Chatham-Kent residents able to access primary care in CK.
Chatham Councillor Brock McGregor entered a friendly amendment to Ceccacci’s motion requesting a future report to Council focusing on alternative spending options for the incentive reserve including, but not limited to, supports for the CK Family Residence Training Program, student loan forgiveness, and learner engagement.
Recently, a group of volunteers in Wallaceburg launched a fundraising campaign to bring family doctors to the community, where an estimated 3,000 residents currently lack primary care.
The campaign, announced October 24, aimed to raise $100,000 over eight weeks to recruit three family physicians to the Wallaceburg Community Medical Centre.
