Heather Wright/The Independent

Sarah Milner is looking for ways to provide more care in Central Lambton.

Milner, who has returned as the Central Lambton Family Health Team’s executive director, says since its inception, the team’s roster of patients has nearly doubled. She expects the group will hit the 20,000 patient mark in 2026. And that means they’re going to need more room and more doctors.

Milner has been meeting with municipal leaders to understand the growth occurring in their communities and to figure out who might be willing to work with CLFHT to provide care in offices outside of Petrolia.

About 1.8 million people in Ontario don’t have a family doctor. In Lambton, health care recruiters estimate as many as 25,000 people are still looking for a physician.

As the province pushes to provide more care, it’s easing up on some of the rules around recruitment. “We could add as many physicians as we can recruit and house,” Milner tells The Independent.

But housing them at the Petrolia site would be tough. Milner says the 13,300 square-foot office which opened in 2014 is now reaching capacity, even with a 700 square-foot expansion “Space is at a premium,” she says adding they have to be “somewhat creative” to find a solution.

One of those solution is the Access to Care building in Wyoming. Milner says the nurse practitioner run clinic sees up to 500 patients a month for emergent care for ailments such as ear or urinary tract infections. “People can just call directly and then they just triage and put people in, and they don’t have to be a patient,” she says.

But Milner says more health care help is needed.

Milner has been “looking around to see kind of what our options are for additional space. 

“Even talking to all the mayors and the municipalities; since I’ve returned, I’ve kind of been reaching out, meeting with them, and seeing what the growth is over the next two to five years, what they’re looking at and what the needs seem to be (if) there’s enough to sustain having additional physicians.

“I could see that there’s a lot of potential for that. And it’s just unbelievable the amount of growth that’s coming to the county.” Milner mentioned Warwick, Plympton-Wyoming and Brooke-Alvinston in particular. 

But all that will take time and eventually money to help set up any extra care centres. 

Recently, CLFHT became a registered charity and now has its own foundation through the Sarnia Community Foundation. 

“We would have sometimes people approaching and wanting to make a donation for various reasons, on behalf of a loved one who received good care, and they wanted to do something or someone’s estate … we didn’t have a good mechanism for that,” Milner said. The foundation will be able to help with that now. She can see some of those donations being used for expansion into the community.

“It could be potentially something like a capital project,” Milner said.