Kingsville clinic expansion aims to ease doctor shortage in Essex County

Work is continuing to close the healthcare gap in Essex County. CTV Windsor’s Chris Campbell has more.

More residents in Essex County will soon have access to primary care after new provincial funding was announced Thursday for the Essex County Nurse Practitioner-Led Clinic in Kingsville.

Essex MPP Anthony Leardi announced the investment, which will allow the clinic to take on an additional 800 patients, expanding to the 1,200 already rostered since last year’s approval.

“There was a huge need in this area,” said Laura Levesque, executive director of the Essex County Nurse Practitioner-Led Clinic.

“So, we were successful last year with the announcement to roster 1,200 patients. And now with this new announcement, we are able to roster an additional 800 patients who are able to have access to this full gamut of care within our clinic.”

Levesque said patients benefit from a team-based model that includes dietitians, social workers, nurses, and nurse practitioners.

“So, they can have access to our entire team,” she said.

“It just really does impact the entire community.”

The funding announcement follows a related initiative unveiled Wednesday at Erie Shores HealthCare, which launched a new primary care referral pathway connecting discharged hospital patients to local clinics, including the Kingsville site.

“This is a really important point where when patients are discharged from the E.R. or discharged from an inpatient unit or admission discharge unit, that we’re attaching patients to the nurse practitioner-led clinic in Essex and or through the weCHC in real time,” Erie Shores Healthcare CEO Kristin Kennedy told CTV News.

“And that’s allowing us to minimize revisits to the E.R. or readmissions as well.”

Leardi said the investment supports the government’s ongoing strategy to connect every Ontarian to primary care.

“According to the Canadian Institute of Health Information, approximately 90 per cent of all people in Ontario have access to primary care, leaving approximately 10 per cent of the population still in search of primary care,” he said.

“And that’s why we are implementing the strategy that was developed by Dr. Jane Philpott. Our eventual goal is to make sure that everybody in Ontario has a connection to primary care, either through a family physician, a nurse practitioner, or a family health team.”

Leardi added that improving access to primary care is a key step in reducing pressure on hospitals.

“Primary care is the best way to keep people out of the emergency room,” he said.

“That’s why we are focused on getting primary care to everybody in Ontario.”

Jonathan Foster, clinical vice president at Windsor Regional Hospital, said nurse practitioner-led clinics play an important role in ensuring patients can access care closer to home, particularly as respiratory season begins.

“It’s definitely the beginning of respiratory season,” explained Foster.

“So having access to vaccines, being able to be checked out if you do start to come down with a virus or cold of some sort, having that access is so important. And this is a great location in the heart of the county, close to Erie Shores and Leamington.”

Leardi praised the collaboration between the province, local healthcare partners, and nurse practitioners.

“When you have great partners to work with, you can make things happen,” he said.

“And that’s why we now have 2,000 more people in and around Kingsville connected to primary care.”