While many families in Waterloo Region continue to hold out hope of finding a family doctor, Cambridge residents are among the luckiest in the area.
Nearly every Cambridge resident wanting a family doctor is able to find one.
Officials in that city chalk the success up to strong doctor recruitment efforts – and one of the doctors recruited by those efforts is quick to agree.
“To me this was refreshing, to see Cambridge and realize that I could travel from home to work within 10 minutes,” Dr. Anil Maheshwari tells CTV.
“I love it here.”
Maheshwari came to Cambridge four years ago, leaving behind a practice in New Jersey for the Grandview Medical Centre.
The sudden influx of doctors has cut the waiting list for a family doctor in Cambridge to the bone, which was good news for people like Greg Schell.
“I went seven years before I finally found a doctor, and the ones that were accepting new patients were full within 36 hours of announcing that they would accept new patients,” he says.
But despite matching most residents to doctors, some in Cambridge are concerned that the current period of short waiting lists won’t be a lengthy one.
Within 10 years, an estimated 25 per cent of all doctors in Waterloo Region will retire.
That statistic doesn’t faze Maheshwari.
“We just celebrated one of our doctors’ 65th birthday today (and) there’s no talk of retirement, but you have to be realistic and think that at some point there will be,” he says.
“We are always thinking about who is going to retire and how we’re going to replace them.”
That’s the challenge now facing Cambridge’s medical community – while the rest of Waterloo Region looks to attract doctors to bolster current numbers, Cambridge wants to bring in doctors to ensure their residents don’t face the shortages of the past.
One way to do that is to put an emphasis on clinics rather than individual practices.
“By integrating solo practitioners from the community into a family health team, that makes it more attractive to find a new doctor to take over,” says Dr. Alexander Pessoa of Peak Performance Health Clinic.
Officials in Kitchener-Waterloo say 12 more doctors would have to be attracted to town to satisfy everyone looking for a family doctor.
