Boshcoff says doctor shortage ‘critical’

Concerned over the lack of physicians in northern communities, Thunder Bay Mayor Ken Boshcoff has demanded the north receive more attention from the province.
“Our community is facing an immediate, critical situation in accessing physician services and in providing hospital care to people across Northwestern Ontario,” Boshcoff wrote in a letter dated Feb. 5 and addressed to then Health minister Elizabeth Witmer.
(Tony Clement took over the health and long-term care portfolio in last Thursday’s cabinet shuffle).
Mayor Boshcoff noted that although the recruitment and retention of physicians has been a concern for a number of years, the shortage across the northwest has grown to dangerous proportions.
“There is no other hospital facility in all of Northwestern Ontario that can provide secondary or tertiary care,” he wrote.
“The consequences of failing to provide necessary access to hospital services in Thunder Bay would be enormous, not only in terms of immediate costs of accessing alternate services outside the region but in the risk to life if essential care cannot be provided when it is needed,” he stressed.
Copies of Mayor Boshcoff’s letter were circulated to all Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association members, including Fort Frances, which will receive the letter during tonight’s regular council meeting here.
A petition also was sent to the other municipalities to collect signatures in support of Mayor Boshcoff’s letter and request for aid.
“As community leaders, we urge you to respond to our community’s and our region’s critical and immediate needs,” he wrote. “We cannot emphasize sufficiently how absolutely critical this is to people in Thunder Bay and Northwestern Ontario.”
Mayor Boshcoff also noted the Thunder Bay Physicians Planning Group is proposing an emergency plan to address the most urgent issues.
The health minister will be sent a follow-up request to meet with a delegation from Thunder Bay to discuss provincial support for measures which would relieve the immediate crisis.