
CORNWALL – The halls at 840 McConnell Avenue are a little busier with five new doctors on shift.
The Cornwall Community Hospital has successfully attracted two pediatricians, an emergency room doctor, a hospitalist and an obstetrician/gynecologist (OB/GYN).
The five have been hired over the past three to four months but hospital officials chose Wednesday to announce all the new hires as a package.
Dr. Ziyad AlSani and Dr. Leah Nchama are pediatricians and Dr. Alex Hunting will be working in the ER.
“Given that the Quebec government has barred the access for new ER physicians to work on the Island of Montreal, CCH offered the opportunity to work in a busy, and yet well managed, ER department while being close to home in Montreal,” writes Dr. Hunting in an email to Cornwall Newswatch, “Getting to spend more time with my grandmother in Martintown was also a draw.”
Dr. Sephora Pierre is the new OB/GYN. “I was happy to come to Cornwall and serve. It is a friendly town conveniently located between Ottawa and Montreal…and its bilingual!,” Pierre writes.
Dr. Kedarnath Jevaly is hospitalist – a position that essentially has him take the role of family physician for people who come into the ER that don’t have a family doctor.
Dr. Jevalry may not necessarily be busy in that wheelhouse. According of Canadian Institute for Health Information, the Cornwall area has an 88 per cent access rate to a general practitioner.
“We are not necessarily an under serviced area in that sense,” Cornwall Community Hospital Communications Coordinator Jolene Soares tells Cornwall Newswatch.
Soares explains those CIHI numbers bear out in their emergency room. “Eighty-five (85) per cent of people that come here (CCH) stated that they do have access to a local practitioner.”
One challenge for people moving to a new job, including doctors, is spousal employment.
“The hospital in not necessarily helping with spousal employment but that’s not necessarily our goal,” Soares added.
Click on the thumbnails below to see a gallery of photographs of the new doctors.
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