Nurse practitioners want to be part of the solution, northern MPP says

Nov. 10-16 is National Nurse Practitioners’ week in Canada and officials say now is a key time to recognize the many contributions NPs make to the health-care system and their potential to fill the gaps in access to primary care.

"There's close to 40,000 people in Sudbury-Nickel Belt who don't have access to primary care yet," said Nickel Belt MPP and NDP Health Critic France Gelinas.

"We have underemployed nurse practitioners who would love nothing better than to look after us, to take thousands of people who don't have access and give them access. They asked for very modest amount of money from the government to give access to thousands of people on their waitlist, and they can't even get an answer back."

On Tuesday, Gelinas brought up the topic in Ontario Legislature. nurse practitioner Amanda Rainville, who is executive director of the Capreol Nurse Practitioner Clinic, was on hand as were more than 20 other NPs.

"I attended Queen's Park to advocate for nurse practitioners on behalf of the Nurse Practitioners Association of Ontario," Rainville said.

"NPS went to school for a long time and their compensation, hasn't really caught up with our increased scope of practice. And it's not only our nurse practitioners that are severely underfunded. We're really struggling in the community sector to retain and recruit staff members because all of our positions are about 15 to 30 per cent below market value."

Unlike doctors, she said NPs are paid a salary instead of billing per patient.

"We're not only advocating for our own compensation, we're also advocating for innovative funding models," Rainville said.

"Nurse practitioners are usually ministry-funded or there's funding set aside in the hospital global budget for nurse practitioners. But if a nurse practitioner wants to … serve under-serviced areas, they don't have any mechanism to do that. So some nurse practitioners have opened up private clinics, not because they want to, but because there's a need for primary care or tertiary care in communities without any public funds coming their way."

The Parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Health, Anthony Leardi said the government continues to make more progress and do more.

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"We know that approximately 90 per cent of everybody in the Province of Ontario has primary care, part of which is delivered by nurse practitioners," Leardi said.

"We've funded the largest expansion of nurse practitioner care in the history of the province of Ontario."

Gelinas is encouraging everyone in her riding to visit her website or phone her office -- she even suggests writing to the minister to have their voices heard.