Kingstonians without a doctor urged to sign up with Health Care Connect

The City of Kingston, Ont., and an organization working to bring primary care to the area are urging those without a doctor to sign up with Health Care Connect.

An estimated 30,000 people in the Kingston area do not have a primary care provider and officials say registering with Health Care Connect — the province’s waitlist working to connect doctors with patients — is important to reflect the true need for providers in the region.

“We are working to ensure every single person in our region has access to the care they need to achieve their best health,” said Dr. Kim Morrison, who heads up the and the Frontenac, Lennox & Addington Ontario Health Team (FLA OHT), in a release Wednesday.

“We recognize that right now not everyone has a primary care provider, but we need to know who you are.”

Ontario Health Teams are being set up across the province to “provide a new way of delivering more connected care and facilitating access to care,” according to the FLA OHT’s website.

Last month the province announced $4.1 million in funding through FLA OHT to help up to 10,000 people in the Kingston area connect with team-based primary care.

Health Care Connect will be used to help enroll people with the new service, known as Health Home, FLA OHT said in the media release.

“Registering with Health Care Connect will allow us to understand our region’s true needs,” Morrison said.

Meanwhile, the City of Kingston said its continuing efforts to lure doctors to the city are also bolstered when unattached patients sign up with Health Care Connect because it gives the Ministry of Health a picture of the need.

Numbers provided by the city show roughly only a third of those without a doctor in the area have signed up with Health Care Connect.

“Having unattached residents sign up for Health Care Connect will not only help us bring more family doctors and nurse practitioners to Kingston, but it will ensure that we have an equitable and fair process for people to access primary care,” said Craig Desjardins, director of strategy, innovation and partnerships at the City of Kingston.

Last month hundreds of people waited in line for hours — some camping out overnight — for the chance to roster with a doctor at CDK Family Medicine and Walk-In Clinic on Sutherland Drive after the clinic announced it would be accepting new patients.

Roughly 600 new patients were rostered over two days, CDK has said. The clinic has said it has space for at least 3,000 new patients and further “rostering days” will be held in the coming months. More information and pre-registration is available on the clinic’s website.

More information about signing up for Health Care Connect can be found on FLA OHT’s website.

1:46 Hundreds line up for chance to get a doctor at Kingston clinic