In an effort to bridge some of the gaps between the healthcare providers and their patients, the province is helping the region become a beacon for cardiac care.
In an announcement today at St. Mary's Hospital in Kitchener, Health Minister Sylvia Jones said the province is investing a one-time grant to help build, design and implement a new cardiac catheterization lab for patients across southwestern Ontario.
"We are continuing to take bold, innovative and creative action to build a health care system that works for you and your family," said Jones. "The addition of this new cardiac lab will allow even more people across Southwestern Ontario to access state-of-the-art cardiac care in their community, when they need it.”
According to Jones, St. Mary’s Regional Cardiac Care Centre has one of the highest volumes of Ontario’s regional cardiac centres, with the number of people coming to the centre for procedures expected to grow substantially in the next five years.
The goal is to take in more patients from around the region and remove them from waitlists in an already overloaded system.
MPP for Cambridge, Brian Riddell said this new addition will also provide life saving care to those in Cambridge and around the province.
Jones declined to provide a dollar amount of how much the hospital will receive citing a bid process that still needs to take place.
"What I can commit is that the funds have been set aside and they are ready for St. Mary's to use," she said.
The hospital added this investment will increase its capacity by around 50 per cent, allowing doctors there to see thousands more patients each year.
In a time where hospitals all over the province are seeing massive increases in offload delays and the return of hallway healthcare in some cases in Cambridge, the minister thinks the province is on the right track to solving these issues.
"There is no doubt that we have seen challenges as we continue to build up our health human resources," said Jones. "We're building up our capacity."
She points to the previous provincial government's decisions in 2019 that cut residency spots for physicians as one of the reasons for the long wait times and lack of family doctors.
"If we had those residency spots today, we would have an additional 200 to 300 physicians operating in the province of Ontario."
According to a press release by the Ontario Medical Association, there are around 2,500 physicians needed in Ontario.
"Far too many Ontarians, a staggering 2.3 million people, are already without a family doctor and that number is expected to nearly double in only two years," said the release.
Here in Cambridge, there is an estimated 19,197 people without a doctor. By 2026, the number is expected to grow to 36,910 based on projections from the Ontario College of Family Physicians.
Jones said legislation to bring in more internationally trained nurses, doctors and other healthcare support workers will help with the demand needed by the community.
When asked about the private sector poaching nurses and other professionals form hospitals, she dismissed this claim adding that there are requirements for these clinics to detail where they are getting these workers from.
"We are very cognizantly aware that we want to expand our hospitals and make sure that our most urgent patients get care. And procedures like cataracts are offered elsewhere to take on some of the pressure," Jones said.
"There are 14,000 people who are not on a waiting list anymore, so for me it's about making sure there is access and people aren't languishing on a wait list."
