Province cuts physician position for Red Lake, a blow to those hoping for relief amid doctor shortage

The first hospital in Ontario to temporarily close its emergency room due to a physician shortage in 2022 may now have to make do with even fewer physicians in the community.

The province has reduced the physician staffing complement in Red Lake, Ont., from seven full-time equivalent positions to six. 

The Red Lake Clinic in the northwestern Ontario town notified patients last week that it is ending its regular Saturday urgent care clinic and will no longer respond to email or phone messages.  It also warned that emergency room closures may become more common.

"This devastating change will negatively impact the ability to recruit doctors, draw locums and keep physicians working locally," the clinic wrote on its Facebook page. "It will further challenge medical services at the clinic, the hospital and beyond." 

The cut was the result of a review of physician staffing complements in the 38 Ontario communities covered by Rural and Northern Physician Services Group Agreements – a funding model under which doctors agree to collectively provide needed services for a small community. 

The 2021 Physician Services Agreement called for the Ministry of Health and the Ontario Medical Association to strike a working group to carry out the review.

Some physicians had hoped that the initiative would lead to more positions being funded, said Dr. Lisa Habermehl, a rural family physician who works in Red Lake.

But at least two communities in the northwest – Red Lake and Atikokan – lost positions.

Habermehl called it "a huge blow to morale."

It has contributed to a further loss of physicians, said Sumeet Kumar, the CEO of Margaret Cochenour Memorial Hospital in Red Lake. 

"One person, after they heard this announcement, they put in their resignation and their retirement," he said. 

Red Lake had been unable to fill all seven full-time equivalent positions it's funded for, but doctors used the balance of the funding in part to offer premiums to attract locums, physicians who do temporary placements in the community, Kumar said.

"Last week from Aug. 1 to Aug. 6, we would have been closed because we did not have any physician coverage, so we had to increase the premiums significantly to make it attractive for the physicians to come," he said. 

"Ornge had to help us transport a physician from Durham region."