Frontenac County inches towards Doctor Recruitment

Jeff Green | Mar 26, 2025

Rob Wood, of 80/20Info, brought his findings after completing an operational review of primary care in Frontenac County.

Wood is a familiar face in the region, having worked as a consultant for the county, some of the townships and local for not-for profit organisations on a number of projects, over the years. When introducing Wood be fore his presentation, Community Development Officer Debbi Wood pointed out that Wood has been working with the Ontario Health Team for Hastings, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington for the past four years, as a collaboration coach.

Woods said that when he started working on the project, “I think what we were looking for, was a couple of silver bullets, a couple of things that were the same all across the county, that we could come back and say, ‘here are two or three things that you could do that would really improve the situation,’ but we found every area, every clinic had its own issues, so there was no ‘one size fits all’.

Wood pointed out that the four clinics are diverse, not only in their current needs but in the way they are structured, and funded as well. The four clinics that he looked at were the Wolfe Island Community Medical Clinic, the Sydenham Medical Clinic, the Verona Medical Clinic and the Sharbot Lake Family Health Team.

The Sydenham and Verona Medical clinics are part of the Rural Kingston physician group, which also includes two clinics in Lennox and Addington. The Sharbot Lake Family Health Team physicians are affiliated with the Tay River Health Centre in Perth, and also has the support of a Family Health Teams. And the Wolfe Island clinic has no resident physician or nurse practitioner.

The second thing Wood noticed was “sort of a rising sense of concern, both in the short and medium term”, about the doctor situation in Frontenac County.

He pointed out that in Verona “we have a doc who is carrying a load of two physicians, actually a little more than that.” There are three doctors in Sydenham, with two of them nearing retirement and a “third who does not want to take 5,000 patients.” (1,500 is considered the number of patients for a full-time practice but a lot of graduating primary care doctors want to take on a lighter load than that.) “And when we come to the Islands, we don’t have a resident doctor or a resident Nurse - Practitioner” Woods said.

After briefly outlining some of the issues that he found, Rob Woods shifted to pointing to a series of recommendations.

The first was to help primary care clinics, specifically those in South Frontenac, “transition to a more sustainable and attractive business model”.

This could mean looking at an employment-based model, in place of the fee for service model through a Community Health Centre or a Family Health Team.

The second is “supporting initiatives to bring healthcare services to Frontenac Islands”.

This could be done by exploring opportunities for mobile clinics, supporting efforts by Wolfe Island volunteers for them to achieve a rural/remote designation which would bring seed funding for a physician, or connecting with practitioners in Kingston to extend service to the Islands.

Other recommendations include: developing a coordinated recruitment/retention program, exploring steps to reduce the admin and technology burden on clinics, and enhancing connections between Frontenac County, the townships, and the healthcare community.

He also recommended that a community healthcare advisory council be formed with representation from across the county, as well as municipal staff.

In response to Woods' presentation and recommendations, Deputy Warden Bill Saunders, who represents Howe Island on Frontenac Islands Council, said he appreciated the “inclusion of the community group and the unique needs of Wolfe Island’s residents in the presentation” and as if to underline the current stresses in primary care, he announced that after 5 years without a doctor, he had an interview the next day with a clinic, in Kingston, that is willing to take him on as a patient.

Central Frontenac Mayor Frances Smith said “this is something we have to do a lot of work on because people come to our community because we have doctors,” and volunteered to be the county rep on the advisory committee if it gets set up. Smith pointed out that she has been on the board of the Sharbot Lake Family Health Team since it was established, and is familiar with the issues.

Councilor Ray Leonard from South Frontenac, said “I do realise that we have to come together, and we have to work harder. There is still a lot of work that we have to do.

Warden Gerry Lichty said “we, as a council, are going to have to come to grips with this when we come together to look at our budget in the fall, because the amount of money we are putting aside for this [$20,000 per year, as of the 2025 budget] is likely, not enough.” Council approved a motion to receive the report and presentation, and to assign staff the task of developing an implementation plan, outlining “actions, schedule and costs associated with the recommendations,” and to bring that back to Council before budget deliberations for the 2026 budget.