Province neglects local health needs
Local health-care professionals campaigning for a provincially funded medical centre to serve low-income, distressed people who don’t have a doctor make a very strong case based on inequality.
One element is the unequal treatment of marginalized city and area residents. The Peterborough Ontario Health Team (POHT), a provincially created body of city doctors and health-care agencies, says 6,000 people living on the margins don’t have a doctor.
That’s more than half the total number of city and county “orphaned” patients who scramble to find medical care, often ending up at the hospital emergency department for any and every health issue.
The second element is the unequal treatment of this community by the provincial government and Ministry of Health.
Peterborough is the 16th largest urban centre in Ontario, based on Statistics Canada’s definition. The city, four surrounding townships and the two area First Nations have a population of 132,000.
According to statistics gathered by POHT and laid out in a report to city council Monday, 20 Ontario cities have a least one community medical centre dedicated to serving marginalized residents. There are 40 in total.
That means at least four cities that have what are known as Community Health Centres staffed by doctors, nurse practitioners and social workers are smaller than Peterborough.
Size isn’t the only measure of need, but if every other urban area on the top 20 list has a clinic, it seems likely Peterborough would need one too.
In fact, as has been shown time and time again, in relation to community health, Peterborough’s need is substantially greater.
Numbers compiled by POHT make that even more clear. A 2018 evaluation of clinical care and need found Peterborough has the province’s highest rate of both mental health and substance abuse disorders.
Of the 42 cities and towns that have an Ontario Health Team, Peterborough has the third most premature deaths, third most opioid hospitalizations and fourth most deaths, the sixth most incidents where someone who would be better cared for by a family doctor shows up at the hospital ER, and the 12th highest average monthly cost for health care.
Yet this city does not have one of the 40 provincially funded clinics are designed to deal with those and other problems that are to a high degree the result of lack of care for people on the margins.
It’s a repeat of what the community learned when advocates opened their since successful campaign to get a supervised drug consumption and treatment site here. Peterborough ranked at the top for need, yet was shut out of a service the province funded in nine other cities, few with the same level of overdose deaths and hospitalization.
Two months ago, $1.3 million in annual funding was finally confirmed and the consumption and treatment site will be up and running later this year.
A medical centre for the marginalized will cost more, an estimated $7.6 million annually. But the need and the fiscal reality are nearly identical.
Money is available and the service provided justifies the investment. If not, those 40 existing centres wouldn’t be serving other cities.
City council is supporting the call for a Community Care Clinic, in part because of there will be spinoff benefits for the community as a whole.
It will be an uphill battle, but sustained pressure for fair and equal treatment worked for the supervised consumption site and needs to be applied again.
At least four Ontario cities that have what are known as Community Health Centres staffed by doctors, nurse practitioners and social workers are smaller than Peterborough