Kemptville District Hospital was on the verge of having to close its
emergency department in 2023
when The Ottawa Hospital stepped in to lend several helping hands.
The Ottawa Hospital (TOH) and its emergency physician group began working with Kemptville’s emergency department to fill in staffing gaps and ensure the emergency department could remain open at a time when
many rural hospitals
were being forced to temporarily close their emergency departments because of recurring staffing shortages.
“We basically could not recruit enough
emergency physicians
to fill the roster of shifts that we needed,” said Dr. Colin Sentongo, chief of staff at Kemptville District Hospital.
The partnership with TOH, he said, was a game changer for the 40-bed community hospital. But that partnership had an end-date: March 31, 2026. And that meant the hospital had to recruit more emergency physicians — quickly.
The hospital’s emergency department embarked on a “pretty active” recruitment campaign to fill emergency physician gaps at the hospital. “We didn’t want to find ourselves in the same place as we were two and a half years ago,” said Sentongo.
The hospital announced recently that it achieved its goal, hiring 10 new emergency physicians.
Sentongo called the mass recruitment an important step forward for the hospital.
“It improves stability in our emergency department, supports our existing medical staff and helps ensure that residents of North Grenville and surrounding communities can continue to access high quality emergency care when they need it most.”
Ten physicians is a remarkable number of new recruits given ongoing physician and other health worker shortages.
Sentongo said having a new CT scanner made a difference in the hospital’s ability to recruit new physicians. He calls it a “gold standard of care” and said it is a diagnostic tool physicians rely on for everything from abdominal pain to head trauma.
Beyond the new equipment, he said many of the new recruits are physicians who were part of the partnership with TOH and decided they enjoyed working at the smaller hospital south of Ottawa.
“During this partnership with The Ottawa Hospital, there were a lot of emergency physicians who hadn’t experienced community emergency work. All of a sudden they found themselves in a community hospital and a lot of them realized this is a pretty nice place to work,” he said.
Emergency physicians act as independent contractors at public hospitals in Ontario rather than direct employees. Many of them work at more than one hospital doing emergency department shifts.
Dr. Tahereh Hosseini, chief of the hospital’s emergency department, said the hospital will continue to recruit emergency physicians.
The hospital currently has just under 30 emergency physicians, including those newly recruited. Some work full time and some work part time, said Sentongo. The emergency department is open 24/7 and serves about 20,000 people a year.
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