A decade of making a difference: City of Lakes Family Health Team celebrates 10th anniversary

In 2008, the new City of Lakes Family Health Team (CoLFHT) clinic in Val Caron had its first patient walk through the doors. Ten years later, that patient is one of 20,000 who are served by the CoLFHT in one of four clinics in Sudbury, Val Caron, Walden and Chelmsford.

“Many of the patients we’ve rostered over the past ten years didn’t have a family physician, so we’ve been able to help close the gaps in access to primary care in the Greater Sudbury community,” says David Courtemanche, the Executive Director of the CoLFHT.

As the clinic celebrates its tenth anniversary this year, Courtemanche and the team at CoLFHT are reflecting on the milestone, and the impact the clinics have had on the community.

According to Courtemanche, of the approximately 125 family physicians in Sudbury, about 100 are located in the core of the city. Only 25 are located in surrounding areas, despite the fact that half the population of Sudbury lives there.

“Of those 25 physicians, 12 are part of our team,” he says. “People living in the outlying areas of Greater Sudbury now have better access to primary care because our clinics are where they live. We think that’s important.”

In Sudbury, as in many communities in Northern Ontario, recruiting and retaining physicians and other healthcare professionals was a challenge for decades. From the beginning, there was a desire among CoLFHT leadership to make the clinics teaching sites for NOSM as a solution to the shortage, says Courtemanche.

“Having students and residents come in from the Northern Ontario School of Medicine has really helped us increase our health workforce,” he says. In fact, the past seven new physicians hired by the CoLFHT have all been graduates of NOSM, according to Courtemanche.

“Many residents and students from the Northern Ontario School of Medicine find clinical placements with us,” he says. “The CoLFHT provides an attractive place for family physicians to establish a practice, particularly for new physicians who are drawn to team-based care.”

The CoLFHT was approved by the Ontario Ministry of Health and LongTerm Care in 2005 as part of the first wave of new family health teams in Ontario.

At that time, most family physicians in Ontario worked alone or in small practices. Family health teams were a new model of primary care organizations that would include an interdisciplinary team of family physicians, nurse practitioners, registered nurses, social workers, dietitians, and other professionals who would work together to provide primary health care for their community.

The CoLFHT is also a NOSM-designated clinical teaching site for health disciplines, with nurse practitioners, registered nurses and dietitians serving as preceptors for clinical learners.

And the interdisciplinary team is only one piece of the family health team puzzle. The CoLFHT offers afterhours clinics for patients with urgent concerns, as well as a variety of programs addressing priority health issues including geriatrics, diabetes, smoking cessation, mental health and addictions in which the patients have the opportunity to enroll.

“The establishment of multiple clinics delivering team-based care has redefined primary care in our community, and has helped to build a more sustainable local health-care infrastructure,” says Courtemanche. “The Northern Ontario School of Medicine has played a major role in that, and I believe it will continue to for the next ten years to come.”