The Ontario government is committing $6.6 million in funding this year to two Barrie-based primary care groups to expand access for those without a provider.
Announced Friday by Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte MPP Doug Downey, the funding will allow the Barrie Community Health Center (BCHC) to expand to two additional sites, one in the north end of the city, and one in Angus.
Those sites are expected to attach more than 12,000 residents to care.
Meanwhile, the funding will help the Barrie and Community Family Health Team (BCFHT) to coordinate care with the Barrie and Area Ontario Health Team (BAOHT) and take on more staff to increase patient coverage.
"Hopefully it will continue to do what the family health team does really well, which is optimized team-based care," Dr. Matt Orava, a physician and executive co-chair of the BAOHT Primary Care Network, told Barrie360. "We have pharmacists, we have nurse practitioners, we have nurses, we have dietitians."
Overall, it's expected that 20,000 more people will be connected to a family doctor or nurse practitioner this year in Simcoe County.
Previously, prospective patients in search of a family doctor would sign up for the Health Care Connect waitlist, but could be waiting as long as six years to find an option in their area. The provincial government now says that list has been cleared by 87 per cent.
A news release from Downey's office says each area's health team has a plan to attach a high proportion of unattached people in their community, including those from the waitlist.
"It's partly navigating the system, but it's also about having resources at the end of that navigation," Downey told Barrie360, describing residents' issues with finding primary care. "What this announcement is doing, it's allowing us to actually expand. It's not reorganizing."
Orava says the Barrie organizations are the first to clear the waitlist for their area, but signing up is still welcome.
"Now if they access that, they hopefully will be be to link up with a new team member," he told Barrie360.
The Barrie Family Health Organization within the BCHC has an average practice size of about 1,500 patients, which Orava admits is hard to manage, but the funding will allow the centre to take on more patients with newly added healthcare professionals.
"We have a teaching unit which is training new doctors and sticking around," Orava adds. "And, with the Health Centre's model, it's a salaried model, so some of these docs are more incentivized to sign up (to work within the network)."
The health network is comprised of 36 nurse practitioners and 178 family physicians, which is up to 96 per cent of all eligible providers in the region. Orava says that's one of the highest engagement rates across the province.
The funding is through the Primary Care Action Plan, which is providing $3.4 billion to 124 primary care teams across the province from 2025 to 2029. The hope is to connect every resident to a primary care provider by 2029, which Downey called a "fairly ambitious, but achievable goal."
"We've achieved a number of successes that previous governments have not, and our track record shows that we can do ambitious things," he told Barrie360. "We have a plan, we've dedicated money to it, and we have a focus. So, I believe it will happen."
