perspective on health care
Access to Primary Care – A Business Imperative Having access to health care professionals – specifically primary care is critical to the well-being of the residents living in our community. Unfortunately, many locally and across the province, do not have the benefit of being under the care of a family practitioner. And we, like many other communities are competing to attract physicians. The pandemic has created more urgency to this issue as the need for primary care becomes more evident and important. Afterall, a healthy community is a thriving community. The Chamber’s Family Physician Recruitment Program is a community initiative, not only for the welfare of those who already call Kitchener-Waterloo home, but also for the health and prosperity of our business community who are looking to attract the best and the brightest talent to our Region. Access to healthcare is something that many consider before deciding to make the move. Since this critical initiative was launched in 1998, the Chamber, working with community interests, has successfully attracted over 260 family practitioners. We could not have achieved such great results without the support of our partners. With the generous investment and support of our corporate and municipal partners, the Chamber’s Family Physician Recruitment Program has access to participate and attend a number of programs and events throughout the year to attract new family physicians to serve the health care needs of this community. Though in person events have been on pause over the past 20 months, many schools have shifted to online recruitment fairs or have offered interaction with the residents in different ways. This past year we have been busy working with new to practice family physicians as well as established family practitioners from across Ontario and Canada. We have been lucky enough to have a number of physicians relocate from
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other parts of the country to join our thriving community this past summer. We also continue to work with several physicians nearing retirement and beginning to think about transitioning out of practice. These physicians are starting the process of looking for prospective physicians to take over their practice. We encourage retiring physicians to start their search well in advance and provide them with the necessary resources to ensure a smooth transition. We also support the local hospitals in their efforts to recruit and retain emergency physicians and specialists. In recent years we opened our Annual Family/Emergency Medicine Event to also include emergency residents and have had great success filling their openings. Our successes and efforts would not be possible if it wasn’t for our generous corporate, municipal and personal sponsors and supporters of this program. On behalf of the Family Physician Recruitment Program, we sincerely thank our partners for their generous and continued support as we strive to eliminate the physician shortage in KitchenerWaterloo.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jenna Petker Jenna is Physician Recruitment Lead for the Greater Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce.
