Perth-Wellington MPP Matthew Rae and Huron-Bruce MPP Lisa Thompson jointly announced $4.3 million in funding for the Huron Perth and Area Ontario Health Team last Friday in Listowel.
The funding, as Rae says, will help connect more people in the region to critical healthcare resources.
"It's gonna help over 10,000 people get access to primary care in the communities they live in, and it will benefit communities across Huron and Perth counties. The Town of St. Marys, Stratford, Mitchell and Listowel in particular on my side, and then obviously a bunch on the Huron side for Minister Thompson," Rae explained.
The announcement was made at the Fisher Family Primary Care Centre in Listowel. The funding will be split amongst regional family health teams that make up the Huron Perth and Area Health Team. That includes Listowel-Wingham and Area FHT, STAR FHT, Stratford FHT, Huron Community FHT, Maitland Valley FHT, Clinton FHT, Happy Valley FHT, Bluewater Area FHT and Grand Bend Area Community Health Centre and Family Health Organization.
The Listowel-Wingham and Area Family Health team will offer leadership in terms of establishing more outreach clinics for unattached residents, meaning people who don't currently have a primary care physician, with the goal of now getting them one.
MPP Thompson says the leadership from the Listowel-Wingham Family Health Team in the region has been very valuable.
"It's great the collaboration that we see headed up by the Listowel-Wingham Family Health Team across Midwestern Ontario, where they introduced unattached clinics, and they've been highly successful," Thompson shared.
This funding is part of the provincial government's promise to have everyone in Ontario connected to a primary care physician by 2029.
Robin Spence Haffner, Executive Director of the Listowel-Wingham and Area Family Health Team, says the money will help expand the services that family health teams offer, as well as bolster their staffing numbers.
"What it allows all of the family health teams and all the physicians groups to do is see more patients. So they're able to attach more patients at local clinics. So it really builds our capacity to get more people attached to teams-based care throughout the entire region," Spence Haffer said proudly. "We've got funding for at least 18 new clinical staff. So that's everything from nurse practitioners to nurses to social workers to physiotherapists. So really, whatever will help get more people attached (to a physician), so we're really excited about it."
Spence Haffner adds that for anyone in the region that doesn't have a primary care physician and is looking for one, you can sign up online for a service that will help you do that.
"So what people need to do is sign up for Health Care Connect. If you just Google it, you can get signed up and you can sign up for it if you don't have a family doctor or if you do have one but they're far away," she pointed out.
Many people in the area have a family care physician but they're in cities like Kitchener, Waterloo or London, and that can be a daunting amount of travel for some, especially the more elderly members of our communities.
You can sign up for Health Care Connect here: https://hcc3.hcc.moh.gov.on.ca/HCCWeb/faces/layoutHCCRegSplash.xhtml
