Frontenac County Talks About Ontario Health Teams And A Plan For Frontenac County

Jeff Green | May 28, 2025

The Primary Care Act was introduced by the Ontario government just this month, and its core principle is that every Ontario resident will have access to “a primary care clinic or physician”.

That care is to be integrated with other health and social services, and must be “timely” and “free from barriers and free from discrimination”.

Dr. Kim Morrison is the Chief of Staff at the Lennox and Addington County General Hospital in Napanee, and the Executive Lead of the Frontenac, Lennox and Addington (Ontario Health Team (FLA-OHT)

She made a presentation to the May 21 regular meeting of before Frontenac County Council about the work that the FLA-OHT has been doing since its inception in 2020. As she described it, the OHT is tasked with playing a co-ordinating role between all of the healthcare practitioners and institutions in the region to make the healthcare system provide care for individuals and families in the region.

She also pointed out, that there is what she called “an elephant in the room when it comes to primary, physician autonomy. The way it is set up in Ontario, physicians run private businesses and they decide how they want to operate their practices, and where.”

The second part of her presentation focused more directly on how the FLA-OHT can play a role in helping deliver on the commitments in the Primary Care Act in Frontenac County, and what role the county and its member municipalities can play.

The FLA-OHT has been quite successful in attaching previously un-attached patients to primary care, even before the Primary Care Act came along. Dr. Morrison pointed out that 10,000 new patients are newly served by primary care, partly from the work of the OHT, and partly from the work of allied organisations.

Of those, 1500 are located in North Frontenac and Addington Highlands, thanks to the Dr. Weldon coming to the Lakelands Family Health Team in Northrbook and Denbigh. North Frontenac and Addington Highlands both invested in a recruitment fund that helped bring Fr. Weldon to the community from Wales, and Addington Highlands owns and maintains the facilities that Lakelands FHT use in both communities.

Central Frontenac Township owns the building where the Sharbot Lake Family Health Team is located.

Central Frontenac Mayor Frances, who also happens to be the Chair of the Board of the Sharbot Lake Family Health Team, said that the Family Health Team accepts all local residents as patients.

“As soon as people move to the area, they call or drop in at the family health team, and they get on the roster.”

Dr. Morrison said Sharbot Lake has been a model of the geographic-based service for decades.

“Geography, to your point, Mayor Smith, is the key. How do we bring services to a neighborhood, and rural community certainly looks different than an urban community, it needs to have more outreach, home care may be more difficult in a rural area than it is in downtown Kingston, maybe. But I think that's the key, is geography, and having the primary care providers within the communities, say, I'll grow my practice more, because it again, it comes down to physician autonomy, because if your don't want to play you don't have to,” said Dr. Morrison.

Between the Lakelands and Sharbot Lake Family Health Teams, residents in Central and North Frontenac and Addington Highlands have high access to primary care, but the stress point in mainland Frontenac County is in South Frontenac.

As South Frontenac Mayor Ron Vandewal pointed out, council has heard from the Sydenham Clinic that they have no space to accept more patients, and Dr. Sabra Gibbens of the Verona clinic is over-loaded with patients and cannot take any more either.

He talked about what would happen if South Frontenac decided to build a clinic for the doctor's and allied health services, but he was concerned about cost.

“If South Frontenac built a facility,” he said, would the doctor's then say, ok we could join together, because it would be a better place to manage everything, is there a way that they would be compensated for that without just going on to property taxation? If it looks like we could build it, and as they say, if you build it they will come, but that is not just the property tax payer paying for it, when we all know it is supposed to be the province out of everybody's money.”

Dr. Morrison said that  “built within the fee structure for primary care, is an amount of overhead. It is not as much as the Ontario Medical Association would like it to be, but it is there, and it should cove that. Certainly, having a central hub, that multiple service providers, family physicians, maybe some social services, maybe community paramedics, allied healthcare services. But if there was a central place where people in South Frontenac knew they would go to for service, and the people that would provide those services, should be expected to pay their fair share of overhead.”

She said the value proposition for providers in such a facility would mean they would not have to deal with heat and hydro bills, property taxes, the state of the well, etc., and the convernice of not having to send patients “down the road for allied health workers. So there is value for me as a family physician to be located in such a facility. It might cost a little more, but that is what I am paid to do, is create that space.”

Even though, as Vandewal pointed out, many of the patients seen in the Verona and Sydenham clinics are from outside the region, Dr. Morrison said that the way to deal with that is to target new patients, insisting that all new patients come from South Frontenac.

Dr. Morrison's presentation coincided with a county staff proposal for a implementation plan for the Frontenac County initiative “Healthcare in Our Community”, that is being led by Debbi Miller, Community Development Officer with the Economic Development Department.

Among the 7 aspects of the plan, the first two deal with medical clinic and clinic structure. The fist is to continue working with the clinics in Frontenac County, and the second is to explore the possibility of an “integrated care hub” in South Frontenac. She said that as part of this work, looking at possibilities outside of Frontenac County borders will also be included. She said that consultant services will be part of exploring an “integrated care hub”.

Looking at services for Wolfe Island is also included in the work plan, as is recruitment and retention, which includes the possibility of hiring a recruiter on an as needed basis.