Kingston nurses disappointed by lack of funding
A group of Kingston nurses is expressing disappointment that the provincial government did not approve a bid for funding that it made toward opening a proposed nurse practitioner-led clinic in the city.
On its website, Nurses for Kingston, a group of Kingston-area nurse practitioners, said that its proposed clinic would have employed five nurse practitioners and served approximately 4,000 patients in the Kingston region.
It would have joined 25 other nurse practitioner-run clinics in Ontario, and Nurses Kingston said its mission was to “create the first hybrid nurse practitioner-led clinic in Ontario,” offering both primary health-care services to registered patients as well as walkin urgent care.
“We are disappointed that the Ontario Government has not approved funding for the establishment of a nurse practitioner-led clinic in Kingston,” Maryanne Green, lead of the NPLC initiative in Kingston, said in a written statement released on March 8. “Nurse practitioners are crucial in expanding access to health care, particularly for vulnerable and underserved communities.”
Hannah Jensen, a spokesperson for Ontario Deputy Premier and Health Minister Sylvia Jones, told Postmedia that the ministry received an “overwhelming number of applications” during its Expression of Interest, which closed in 2023.
“Ontario Health and the Ministry of Health worked to extensively review applications and determine which proposals were ready to begin connecting more Ontarians to care immediately,” Jensen said in a written statement.
“We encourage all unsuccessful applicants to continue to work with their Ontario Health region and the Ministry of Health on innovative action they can take to make it easier to access care in their community. We recognize that there is more work to do, and while these teams begin to connect hundreds of thousands of Ontarians, we remain dedicated to implementing our Your Health plan to further ensure everyone that wants a primary care provider can connect to one.”
The nurses group says the province’s rejection of its funding request “underscores the ongoing challenges facing Ontario’s healthcare system and the underutilization of nurse practitioners in addressing these issues.”
Nurse practitioner became a regulated profession in 1997 as part of an effort to address the increase demand for primary health care, the Canadian Nurses Association said on its website.
According to the association, nurse practitioners are registered nurses who have additional education and nursing experience. That extra education allows them to autonomously diagnose and treat illnesses, order and interpret tests, prescribe medications and perform medical procedures.
Nurses for Kingston argues that the key role that nurse practitioners can play in the region would address the growing primary care crisis and shortage of family doctors.
As reported by Postmedia, based on provincial data compiled by researchers with Inspire-phc, there are currently more than 45,000 uncertainly attached patients in eight forward sortation areas in the Kingston area — the first three digits of a postal code — that captures a population of approximately 334,000 people.
While nurse practitioners have the skill set to perform many duties that doctors themselves do, unlike physicians, nurse practitioners cannot bill directly to the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP).
The government’s denial of the Nurses for Kingston project has left few alternatives, Green said in the group’s news release.
“This is forcing us to explore alternative models of care, including opening a private clinic with user fees, to meet the growing demand for services in Kingston,” Green wrote in a news release dated March 8. “For patients with private coverage, such services may be covered. However, this is not the solution we hoped for, as this model could be prohibitive for some of our most vulnerable populations, and we believe in equitable access to publicly funded care.”
Postmedia pointed in a recent article to an Ottawa clinic that charges patients $400 per year to access nurse practitioners for their primary care.
Ontario’s Ministry of Health does not approve of what they describe as a “loophole.”
“Our government will not tolerate clinics taking advantage of a loophole created by federal legislations and charging patients to access primary care,” Jensen said in a written statement. “We hope the federal government takes action to ensure Ontarians, and Canadians, can access publicly funded primary care.”
Nurses for Kingston will continue to work toward a nurse practitioner-led clinic in the city.
“We are continuing to go forward with plans to mobilize the local nurse practitioner community to increase access to care,” Green said in the March 8 news release.