The president of the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) made a stop in Barrie on Friday to speak with medical professionals and the city’s mayor to raise awareness around health-care issues ahead of the Feb. 27 provincial election.
Speaking to doctors and nurses at the Barrie Community Health Centre on Bayview Drive in the city's south end, Dr. Dominik Nowak listened to concerns from staff.
“We're going around the province, basically moving health care up as an election priority, and we're meeting with doctors, with health-care leaders, with concerned citizens who want to get our health-care system back on track,” he said in an interview with BarrieToday, an affiliate of BradfordToday and InnisfilToday.
Nowak believes the major parties are now talking about health as the No. 1 issue for Ontario voters.
“When people go to the ballot box next week, we need to make up our minds of who's the right choice to lead us to a better health-care system, for today, for next year and for the next years as well,” he said.
“When I go into rooms of doctors, health-care leaders, and I ask them to share one word about the state of the health-care system, the word that comes up most often by far is crisis,” Nowak added.
The other words that come up, he said, are the human beings behind the care.
“They're holding things together … They love doing the work,” Nowak said. “They're stretched, but they're holding together the health-care system, and a big part of that crisis is the nearly one-in-four people across the province that don't have access to a family doctor."
He said it means people are using emergency rooms as their “front door” to the health-care system.
“They're using hospital resources that we don't have," said Nowak. "They're missing cancer screening and preventive care and actually costing the health-care system more money.”
Part of Nowak's tour throughout Ontario has him speaking with some provincial election candidates in the area, as well as Barrie Mayor Alex Nuttall later in the day.
The Liberal candidate for the Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte riding is Rose Zacharias, a doctor and former OMA president herself.
Nowak was asked if his visit to Barrie was linked to Zacharias and her election bid.
“We support physician leaders across different parts of the health-care system, and it’s amazing to see strong physician leaders like Dr. Rose Zacharias, past OMA president, step into or look for opportunities to contribute to their health-care systems in elected roles,” he said.
“The politicians I’m meeting can't avoid the pain that people are feeling in the health-care system, the nearly one-in-four without a family doctor, the emergency department closures with over 200 last year, (and) the wait lists that are ballooning," Nowak added.
Nowak says it's becoming more and more of a crisis in Ontario.
“We called it a catastrophe in many communities, and that's coming up when politicians are knocking on doors," he said. "That's why we're seeing health care as the No. 1 election issue for voters right now, and we've seen commitments from the major parties around getting everyone a family doctor as a big example for how this election could be historic."
Christine Colcy, CEO of the Barrie Community Health Centre, used Nowak’s visit as an opportunity to cheerlead for the growing demand for their model of health care, which is a team approach under one roof, rather than the traditional family doctor medical practice.
A Community Health Centre (CHC) is an incorporated, non-profit agency, governed by a volunteer board of directors. CHCs provide primary care services with an emphasis on health promotion and disease prevention.
Colcy said she was delighted that the OMA president would come to a CHC.
“Dr. Nowak recognized the important CHCs as one of the models of primary health care in the province and, in many ways, a preferred model for a lot of providers, including physicians to work in, so it was just really amazing to see that kind of support from the OMA, and they see this as being a vision for primary care delivery in the province,” she told BarrieToday.
The CHC model is funded by the Ministry of Health, and provides primary health and health promotion programs for individuals, families and communities.
The Barrie CHC employs five physicians and six nurse practitioners.