Peterborough Street Medicine, an innovative physician-led group that is providing primary health care and mental health services to people in Peterborough who are homeless or underhoused, will receive $1,030,202 per year over three years from the Ontario government.
Peterborough-Kawartha MPP Dave Smith made the announcement at Brock Mission, one of the locations where Peterborough Street Medicine practises, on Friday (November 8) at a media event that was also attended by Dr. John Beamish and Dr. Yosra AlMakadma, Peterborough Mayor Jeff Leal, and Peterborough city councillors Keith Riel, Alex Bierk, and Joy Lachica.
Earlier this year, Peterborough Street Medicine received approval from the Ontario Ministry of Health to enter into an homeless shelter alternate funding plan agreement where physicians would be paid hourly rather than through a fee-for-service model.
Co-led by retired family doctor and palliative care expert Dr. Beamish, Peterborough Street Medicine currently includes 10 physicians — eight general practitioners, an internal medicine specialist, and a psychiatrist — who are providing part-time services across Peterborough, including at the Brock Mission, Cameron House, the YES Shelter for Youth and Families, and the modular bridge housing community on Wolfe Street.
“Providing clinics in settings where (unhoused people) are is one way to improve their health and improve the health of the whole community because, if we look after the most marginalized, that leaves room in emergency and within ambulances for the rest of the community to get the care they need,” Dr. Beamish told kawarthaNOW in an earlier interview about the initiative. “If we can improve the healthcare of one group, we’re going to improve healthcare right through the community.”
A homeless shelter alternate funding plan agreement is designed to provide primary care to marginalized and homeless people who are largely uninsured and suffer from complex medical needs, such as addictions, mental health, and chronic diseases, and who may require palliative care. Care is provided in homeless shelters, drop-in centres, community centres, addiction and mental health facilities, and mobile outreach units.
“A theme through my whole practice life has been community involvement, and I really believe that primary healthcare is delivered in the community, not in the hospital, and we need to be creative about finding ways to do that,” Dr. Beamish said. “This is a group that is not served by traditional model of phoning and making appointments, so we need to come up with a better way to do it.”
Under the homeless shelter alternate funding plan agreement, patients are not required to enrol with physicians, and physicians are paid hourly rather than through fee-for-service. This allows physicians to participate in the initiative on a part-time basis, which is desirable for young physicians who want to be involved in community-based medicine without sacrificing their full-time jobs.
“They want to come and do medicine,” Dr. Beamish said. “They want to do other aspects of care, and this will be a very attractive model that physicians may come and choose to spend part of their time doing.”
In October, Dr. Beamish received a 2024 Award of Excellence from the Ontario College of Family Physicians for his work with Peterborough Street Medicine.
“It was very humbling to be nominated by my peers, but I look upon this as not so much a personal award, but a group award,” he told kawarthaNOW.
“This is an award for creativity for a group of family physicians trying to deliver healthcare to a marginalized group and it’s a tough problem, but this is a creative effort to try and solve that.”
This story has been updated to add the Wolfe St. modular bridge housing community on the list of locations where Peterborough Street Medicine provides healthcare services.
With files from Megan Gallant.
