Rural Healthcare Providers are the Cornerstone of our Health System
It's no secret, Rural Healthcare is a cornerstone of local communities across Canada in supporting their populations and providing the support when it is needed most. The only issue with this is who is there to support them? In most circumstances, Rural Healthcare is understaffed, lacks resources, and requires support not presently accessible in their communities. This has created a crisis in attracting and retaining rural clinicians, directly impacting the health and life expectancy of Canadians across our country.
While 18% of Canadians live in rural areas, only 10% of Canadian Doctors service there
“The rural primary health-care system is facing erosion, and even collapse, due to pandemic burnout, long-standing staffing shortages at hospitals and the inability to attract or keep family physicians in small communities”
Impact to Rural Clinicians
Contributing factors to rural Clinician burnout, and leaving:
​
-
Unmanageable Patient load for family practices
-
More Clinicians leaving rural practice than joining
-
Difficult to attract new Clinicians into rural
-
Emergency access to supporting services
-
Non-Emergency Specialist consultation to collaboratively are for their patients in the community
​
In an investigated article published by the CBC, April 2022, the number one possible solution to the challenges facing Rural Clinicians' that have been proposed by rural chiefs of staff and the physicians.
Providing rural and remote emergency physicians with real-time virtual access to specialists.
Impact to Rural Populations
Rural populations have:
-
Higher death rates
-
Shorter Life expectancy
-
Lack of proactive healthcare
-
Inadequate emergency care supporting services
Contributing Factors:
-
Shortage or Family Doctors and Health Teams
-
Access to specialist require considerable time and travel expense
​
Mortality rates for the five leading causes of death — heart disease, cancer, unintentional injury, low respiratory disease and stroke — are all higher in rural areas, as is the overall mortality rate. Jan 31, 2020
​
​
“Poverty, motor vehicle crashes, suicide, cardiovascular disease and diabetes are among a raft of contributory factors to higher death rates and shorter life expectancies for rural residents of Canada than their urban counterparts”
-Canadian Institute of Health Information report
​