Health Services

Even though the World Health Organization has stated that the pandemic is no longer a global emergency, the burden of COVID-19 going forward sits on the shoulders of primary care doctors and nurses, now that the COVID-19 Assessment Centres have largely shut down. Health Services is seeing an increasing number of registered patients and non-registered patients with myriad respiratory illnesses, along with a recent spike in Group A Strep.

The lifting of mask mandates and restrictions, and the availability of vaccines in the past year have contributed to an unprecedented surge of people, including asylum seekers, who require primary health care services. The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on our patients’ health that is broader than the effects of contracting the virus itself. The backlog in hospital procedures is challenging, and numerous forms of care have been delayed, cancelled or otherwise affected by the pandemic throughout 2020 and 2021.

The Health Services team continued to provide valuable learning experiences for nursing, nurse practitioner, and family medicine student placements within the context of COVID-19 practice changes.

Our team steadily increased cancer-screening activities to above pre-pandemic levels, providing crucial early detection of disease for our patients.

Chiropody and the Youth Health Clinic continued to see increasing volumes of patients, as people became more comfortable seeking again health care services.

The team also reached among the highest quality indicators in the province.