If you’re one of the thousands of people in the Kawartha region without a health-care provider, the Peterborough Family Health Team wants you to put your name on its waiting list.
“I hear it all the time — ‘I don’t have a doctor, I don’t have a doctor’ — so please get on the list,” said the team’s executive director, Lori Richey.
Richey says the Family Health Team’s list can give people a head start if they are among the 6,500 area residents currently without a doctor. By signing onto the wait list, patients will be first in line to be paired with a new physician when one arrives in the area.
The wait list will also enable patients to access two clinics: one on King Street in Peterborough, the other at the Morton Community Healthcare Centre in Lakefield.
“I’m calling those two clinics little staging houses, where we’re holding people and caring for them until such time as we get a permanent solution for them,” said Richey.
When a new family doctor moves to the area, he or she will be connected with patients on the wait list as well as their medical records.
“Eleven local doctors are expected to hang up their stethoscopes within two to five years so finding replacements sooner rather than later is important,” said Richey.
Since the clinics opened last August, two family physicians have moved to the area and connected with 184 patients.
Currently, 700 residents have signed on to the list.
For more information, visit the Peterborough Family Health Team.
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