It is my pleasure to rise in this place to recognize the good work SE Health does in my riding and across Ontario. SE Health is a not-for-profit health care provider in Ontario. SE Health currently provides nearly 50% of all home care services in Ontario.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting with them and representatives locally and touring their location in Palmerston. I had the opportunity to meet Kelly, a community nurse in the town of Minto who works for SE Health. She does important work to support our seniors and those recovering at home from major operations. She is also a community care nurse at Minto-Clifford Public School. I had the opportunity to join her at Minto-Clifford to meet some of her brave patients. No matter the need, Kelly ensures her students are living a healthy and rewarding life. We had a great discussion about how best we can work together to better serve those living in our communities.

I want to thank Kelly for everything she does for our rural communities and the children she helps every day. Our government is committed to helping our elderly remain in their homes longer and ensuring Ontarians receive the right care in the right place. I appreciate everything SE Health does and that all their employees do in my community and across Ontario.

I rise today to speak about the important work that nurse practitioners do, serving patients in every corner of our province, and why we need this government to fund more nurse practitioner positions. At a time when many family physicians are retiring, patients across Ontario lose access to primary care, leaving them dependent on walk-in clinics and emergency departments. Meanwhile, Aboriginal health access centres, community health centres and nurse practitioner-led clinics all have nurse practitioners who want to be hired and who are available, but they have no money to hire them. These nurse practitioners can assess, they can treat, and they can advise patients with complex medical conditions who otherwise end up in our crowded emergency rooms.

Unfortunately, this government refuses to modernize their antiquated funding model so nurse practitioners can be hired to provide their excellent services to more patients.

For example, an executive director in a nurse practitioner-led clinic has to be a nurse practitioner, but she still has to carry an 800-patient-load roster and her administrative duty in this clinic.

In fact, this funding model is so rigid that the government claims that they are still working on the paperwork to provide nurses working in these clinics with the retention bonus that was promised nine months ago.

If this government wants to improve access to health care services to thousands of people across Ontario, invest in nurse practitioner positions. It will pay off.

With the greatest of respect, we haven’t been ignoring it. In fact, our government has made unprecedented investments to ensure that our hospital partners have the resources they need to make sure that they can deal with what is undoubtedly a bit of a triple threat of RSV, influenza and COVID-19. In particular, with emergency departments, we have invested $90 million in EDs to pay for result programs that provide funding incentives for 74 high-volume emergency departments to make improvements in areas such as length of stay. We’ve implemented 49 models of care for select 911 patients where patients can receive timely and appropriate care in a setting outside of an emergency department.

We’ve funded Ornge’s virtual medical doctor trial for northern hospitals at risk of closure. The emergency department locum program and the COVID-19 temporary summer locum program’s expansion have provided supports for eligible hospitals in rural and northern Ontario to maintain—

The physician shortage in northern Ontario small town hospitals is facing a crisis. With three of six physician positions soon to be vacant in Wawa, the hospital there is desperate for assistance from this government to help to prevent closures and staff burnout.

We’ve already seen ERs and primary care affected across the region in the north. What is this government doing to ensure that small northern hospitals will not have to close their doors to patients?

When concerns about keeping the doors open were expressed to the Ministry of Health officials, the ministry suggested, “Well, why don’t you just divert your primary care support to your emergency support?”

Speaker, this is a recipe for disaster. Without primary care, you’re setting up the system for failure. Will this government work with northern health care providers to recruit and retain doctors in the north?