A research analysis of epilepsy care in Northern Ontario has revealed that Northerners are disadvantaged by a lack of specialist care provided by neurologists and epileptologists.

Authored by Yun Jenny Jiang and Dr. Warren Blume, the report points out that the number of epilepsy patients per eurologist/epileptologist in Northern Ontario is 4,800, compared to 4,000 for the province as a whole.

Jiang, who has a BSc in Biology from the University of Western Ontario and a special interest in health-care services in the North, said the lack of specialist care puts a burden on family doctors and other health-care resources.

Citing a 1999 study entitled The Burden of Epilepsy by Samuel Wiebe, Jiang points out that patients with uncontrolled epilepsy require more health-care resources than other chronically ill patients, resulting in “increased hospitalization, more emergency room visits and a greater need for psychological counselling, social work and nursing services.”

The Wiebe study also revealed that 62 per cent of epilepsy patients in the northeast used emergency room services during a 12-month period, compared to a provincial average of 39 per cent. In the northwest, 51 per cent of epilepsy patients sought emergency room care during the same period.

According to Jiang, Northern Ontario is served by a total of six neurologists, including three in the northwest and three in the northeast, though not all of them reside in the North. Dr. Blume, for example, holds a clinic at the Northeast Mental Health Centre in North Bay every three months and Dr. William Brown of Hamilton travels to Thunder Bay to see patients.

Dr. Blume has submitted a proposal to the Northeast Local Health Integration Network for an epilepsy centre in North Bay to help address the shortage of services for Northerners.

Brenda Pace, co-ordinator of the Neurology Clinic at the Northeast Mental Health Centre, agrees that an epilepsy centre is needed. The current clinic serves both inpatients and outpatients from as far away as Timmins, Cochrane and Iroquois Falls. In-between clinics, said Pace, patients in need of care go to Emergency or are driven to Huntsville.

The proposed epilepsy centre in North Bay would cover the cost of a social worker, an EEG technician, a nurse and an increase in the frequency of clinics. According to Dr. Blume, the centre could also serve patients from a larger catchment area, including Sudbury and Parry Sound.

Jiang was introduced to Northern Ontario and its health-care challenges when she accompanied Dr. Blume on one of his visits to North Bay.

After growing up in Vancouver and attending school in London, she says she fell in love “with the small community atmosphere” and returned to spend a summer shadowing health-care professionals in North Bay, Sturgeon Falls and Mattawa.

“Everyone was so warm and friendly,” she said. “I was so touched, I just loved it.”

The experience convinced her to apply to medical school and pursue a career in rural medicine.

Her research analysis of epilepsy services in the North was done “purely out of interest.”

“I realized that rural medicine is very different from medicine in London and I wanted to illustrate that point.”