City of Brantford Council voted to refer the decision in regards to creating a City-owned medical clinic during its Committee of the Whole, Planning and Administration meeting on Tuesday, November 12, 2024.
Earlier this year, Councillor Dan McCreary moved a resolution that directed Brian Hutchings, the City’s now former CAO, to investigate the possibility of creating a family medical clinic and to take the following actions:
“A. Review the availability of city-owned space, including but not limited to, 177 Colborne St. West, 58 Dalhousie St; and 99 Wayne Gretzky Parkway and other properties which may be acquired by the City of Brantford; and
B. Review costing and produce a preliminary budget for outfitting a family medicine clinic; and
C. Review costing and produce a preliminary budget for ongoing operating costs.”
During Tuesday’s meeting, a report from Aaron Wallace, the City’s Director of Strategic Initiatives, stated that based on feedback from local healthcare providing partners and the City’s Engineering Services department, if the City were to retro-fit a City-owned facility to host eight to ten physicians, it would require a capital investment of at least $3.74 to $3.78 million.
The report noted it would also cost anywhere between $772,000 to $822,000 per year to operate, and that of the potential City-owned locations, “only 399 Wayne Gretzky Parkway is partially feasible. This location is approximately 7500 sq/ft and could only accommodate five to seven physicians.”
The recommendation from the report stated that given the uncertainty regarding physician recruitment, staff did not recommend that the City proceed with the development of a City-run medical clinic.
During the discussion period, Councillor Sicoli said that during this year’s Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) Conference, several City councillors had a delegation with Sylvia Jones, Ontario’s Minister of Health, concerning physician recruitment and how much easier it is to recruit doctors when there’s a new facility with up to date, state of the art technology and equipment.
Earlier in the meeting, councillors also heard from two delegations speaking to a separate report titled “Community Physician Recruitment Program 2024 and 2025 Action Plan.” Sandra Vos, Chair of the Family Physician Task Force and Dr. Elliot Scott, a general practitioner in Brantford and chair of the Brantford Brant Norfolk Primary Care Council, both noted that family physicians aren’t choosing Brantford to practice family medicine due to several reasons.
“The environment has drastically changed over the years as to what medical graduates are choosing as post-graduate specialties,” said Vos. “There are many reasons why they are hesitant to settle on permanent locations to practice as a family physician in the community. Our task force recognizes that we cannot compete with other regions that are offering tens of thousands of dollars in cash and other incentives.”
Dr. Scott added that upon graduation, a majority of family doctors and primary care providers (including nurse practitioners) are interested in being involved in Family Health Teams (FHT) rather than being a solo practitioner.
“We have one [FHT] in Paris and we have one in Simcoe, and what they provide is interprofessional care, and that’s how family doctors are trained these days,” said Dr. Elliot. “If we look at the undertaking of a clinic that could provide a health team environment with interprofessional care, and if we could fold into that the academic quotient, we would have close to an 80% retention rate because that’s what the numbers show us. …That gives us an opportunity and I think we really need to look at that as a recruiting mechanism.”
Sicoli said that having now seen the Community Physician Recruitment Program 2024 and 2025 Action Plan report, and the frightening numbers regarding the City’s need for 14 to 16 more physicians to keep up with the growing population, as well as knowing that the Physician Recruitment program is looking to disband after 2025, she found it hard to commit to a family medical clinic at this time.
“And I find it hard to commit to this or to talk about this without knowing the future or the direction of our physician recruitment and what that looks like,” said Sicoli. “Personally, I find it almost impossible to look at each of these items from their individual silos like we’re forced to do when they’re two different agenda items.
McCreary said that while his original May 14 resolution for a family medical clinic arose during a discussion with the Physician Recruitment Committee/task force, with both the federal and provincial governments downloading the responsibility to the municipal level, taxpayers can only afford to pay so much.
“I can’t put a price on health, but there’s only so much folks can afford to pay in taxes,” said McCreary. “We need to balance the things that we can do in this community to really fill in some of the gaps that we see with respect to provincial and federal funding and their unending desire to offload things on other partners, and generally, that tends to be us.”
He said that while the County of Brant may have the Cowan Community Health Hub, it was largely paid for through donations and naming rights.
“We see what’s happened in County of Brant, where they have a certain model with respect to their new clinic, which was paid for largely by donation and by naming rights. And if I recall, you can’t turn around in there without seeing the name of a company on a wall sponsoring everything from light switches to medical centre components.”
A short while later, Sicoli moved to refer the decision back to staff and have them review it as part of the Physician Recruitment Action Plan, and come back to council before the 2026 budget deliberations.
“Physician recruitment is the number one priority in our community, we hear this over and over and over. People need family doctors, and I do think that this medical centre could be just another tool in our toolbox while we’re going through the [recruitment] process,” said Sicoli. “I would hate to see us say no to this today and then procedurally, we can’t cycle back to it. I think if we look at this through a different lens, through the physician recruitment lens, it might look a little different, but I do think that we should be keeping this alive for the time being, just to make sure that we’re not cutting ourselves off from this opportunity.”
The vote to refer the item was then carried on a vote of 9-0, noting that Councillors Greg Martin and John Sless were not present for the vote.
The final vote to refer the item will come to Council on Tuesday, November 26.
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
