A health service program being tested in Muskoka is getting a lot of use.
Executive Director of Cottage Country Family Health Team Shelly van den Heuvel says the provincially funded Community Health Hubs have been open for just over two years and there are now over 1,500 Muskokans regularly visiting the nurse practitioners at these health hubs.
Overall, she says there have been over 9,000 patient visits to the health hubs across Muskoka.Van den Heuvel says she believes this is a big factor to a drop in the amount of visits to emergency rooms in Bracebridge and Huntsville.
She says the province has reached out to invite Cottage Country Family Health Team to apply for more funding to keep the program running.
Van den Heuvel says there’s no guarantee they’ll get the grant, but it means the province is paying attention to how well the program is doing in Muskoka. She says Cottage Country Family Health Team will be inviting community leaders and stakeholders to a meeting in September to talk about the next steps for the program.
The health hubs are currently set up in Dorset, Port Carling, Port Severn and on the Wahta First Nation and there is also a mobile health hub that makes rounds in Ryde, Port Sydney, Severn Bridge and Vankoughnet. The program was originally given a three-year run by the province to see how much use it would get in Muskoka. The buildings where the health hubs are set up were renovated or built using a majority of community investments.
You can find all the details on health hub hours and locations here.