Gisèle Guénard Vice-Chair, North East Local Health Integration Network

Thank you, merci. I am honored to have been asked to speak here today on behalf of the Board of Directors of the NELHIN. FR: Réseau local d’intégration des services de santé, Nord Est (Ontario).

One of the most anxiety-producing experiences in a person’s life, and terrifying - in the life of one who is suffering illness, is to be without a primary care provider.

When announcing the roll out of the NP initiative last week, “Premier Dalton McGuinty said that he had been to Sudbury, and he has seen the future at the Sudbury District Nurse Practitioner Clinic. And, he said, the future is here.”

The North East local health integration network’s mandate is to PLAN, INTEGRATE & FUND 2/3 of the health care system within the communities stretching from Parry sound to the James and Hudson Bay Coast. Over half a million people, in an area that stretches from Toronto’s cottage country, all the way to
the edge of the Arctic Circle. The North East Local Health Integration Network funds over 200 agencies, hospitals, long-term care, mental health organizations, CCAC, and many more. We are holding our Board meetings this month, on this Friday, in Moose Factory, so that people there can speak with us directly, and we can explore solutions together.

Primary care is one area of the 1/3 of the Health Care pie we do not fund. Many people in the communities we serve do not have access to regular primary health care. Family Health Teams, Physicians & Nurse Practitioner clinics are funded directly by the MOHLTC.

However, we are mandated to work with all of those organizations so that together, we can help meet the growing needs within our communities and help transform our health care system, at one of the most challenging crossroads of modern times.

Since I came on board with the North East Local Health Integration Network, just over one year ago, as one of the two board members for Manitoulin/Sudbury Planning Area, many new positive change initiatives have begun, most of them ideas from the offices, homes and communities like this one – from the grass roots.

A large number of them are aging at home initiatives. Some of them are province-wide initiatives, like wait times in Emergency Departments. Minister Caplan, our Minister of Health and Long Term Care, is providing leadership and focus on the issue of wait times in “Emergency Departments” and the relation of those issues to Alternate Level of Care and Chronic Disease Management. Nurse Practitioner-Led Clinics are part of the solution to these complex issues.

And so just about a year ago, when Marilyn Butcher, Roberta Heale and their team presented to us at a Board Meeting of our NELHIN in Parry Sound, I was intrigued to hear about their progress since they opened, just a few short months before. You see, I had personally seen, these same NPs have a powerful
impact in access to care in a nursing home with only skeleton medical staff, and in the Espanola & Area Family Health Team, now a model for Ontario.

The Sudbury District Nurse Practitioner Clinic’s model for access to care is to serve patients currently without a primary care provider. With many unemployed NPs in Ontario, and 100’s of thousands of patients without a physician, the solution, for this team, was obvious. They had a vision – and stayed focused on that vision. They innovated – they struggled through start-up, and now, the initiative is growing across the province, with Premier Dalton McGuinty having now announced that 25 are slated to open by 2012.

The next 3 approved to open their doors are: In the NELHIN, Sault St Marie. In the North West LHIN, Thunder Bay. In the Erie St Clair LHIN, Belle River is next.

Physicians, Physiotherapists, Pharmacists, and other regulated healthcare professionals have been providing health care under their governing body license and scope of practice capabilities, in our communities for a long time. Today, thanks to the vision, determination, planning and implementation abilities of Marilyn and Roberta, their staff and collaborating physicians, board members and volunteers, finally, Nursing has a leadership role in Primary Care in Canada. History has been made right here in the Sudbury district. This is the first nurse practitioner led clinic in Canada. It is an overwhelming success, and now expanding to a 2nd site in Lively, to take in an eventual total of 4,500 patients.

This is not only a new organization, but one where there was no predecessor. Under the guidance and leadership of the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care, and this areas MOHLTC Nurse Practitioner clinic development Leader, Mr John Roininen, they innovated, integrated and collaborated in new ways,
while at the same time delivering comprehensive primary care to new patients literally lined up at their door.

This team has created a prime opportunity for system planners to learn from, and build on: that is - the story of the conception, development, launch and full program implementation of this historic nurse practitioner led, primary care clinic. It is the keystone of one of the most fundamental elements of system change in health care we have seen for decades.

The contribution of the members of this team and the team as a whole go far beyond what we see at this Annual General Meeting. With their words, and more importantly in their actions, they have never wavered in their focus on their raison d’être - the patient. From the healthy expectant family, to the frail, the elderly, and to those facing life’s last journey, this team has filled its caseload capacity, with who came in the door – no one has been refused, to the capacity of each primary care giver.

A famous soldier once said: “The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.” There are many people in health care today, whose soul is on fire for change. Thanks to one group of those people, the Sudbury District Nurse Practitioner Clinics - well over 2200 orphaned patients in this community are no longer alone, and thousands more are registering now for the Lively site.

On behalf of the board of the North East Local Health Integration Network, I commend the team of the Sudbury District Nurse Practitioner Clinics for this successful year of care giving, for making health care history, and for the leadership they are providing at a time in our history, when leadership is what we need most of all.

Thank you,