Residents of Minto, Mapleton and surrounding area will be receiving more access to family health care for patients in their community with the addition of a physician assistant to its Family Health Team (FHT) , Perth-Wellington MPP John Wilkinson has announced
“I am delighted that our Minto-Mapleton Family Health Team will receive support for their new physician assistant,” Wilkinson said. “It’s wonderful any time a community can get better access to health care closer to home. I’m very pleased we’ve been able to assist the people served by the Minto-Mapleton Family Health Team.”
The Minto-Mapleton FHT is one of 20 Family Health Teams (FHT) chosen to receive a physician assistant. Minto-Mapleton will receive up to $273,740 in funding over two years to assist with hiring a new physician assistant.
The physician assistant will help the Minto-Mapleton Family Health Team to reduce the number of patients without a family health care provider, increase access to family health care, through enhanced health promotion, disease prevention, and chronic disease management programs and improve the local coordination of care.
“This is definitely a “good news” announcement that helps to build a further dimension to the Comprehensive Primary Care model in Rural Wellington,” said Jerome A. Quenneville, President and CEO, Wellington HealthCare Alliance.
“Having been selected as one of 20 Family Health Team Physician Assistant Demonstration Sites in Ontario, we are very excited to have recruited a Physician Assistant (PA) as experienced and well trained as Jim Tolmie to our Family Health Team,” stated Dr. Michael Kam, Supervisor of Physician Assistant. “Jim brings with him a tremendous amount of experience and knowledge from his time in the Canadian Armed Forces and Cambridge Memorial Hospital.  We look forward to having Jim work side by side with physicians, their staff and Family Health Team allied health professionals to help promote preventative health care and to improve the overall health of our community.” 
The physician assistant is an innovative new health care professional role in Ontario. Like physician assistants in the Canadian Armed Forces and Manitoba, physician assistants in Ontario are supplementing physician services and work under the authority of a supervising licensed physician. The physician will retain overall responsibility for the direction of the physician assistant’s activities as well as accountability for the health care delivered.
More than 100 physician assistants are currently practicing in a variety of settings in Ontario, with 67 students are registered in the two-year physician assistant program at four Ontario universities