Springwater Township has lost an important medical service in the community which means many residents will have to travel much further for basic health care.

The sudden closing of the Springwater Health Services Centre in Elmvale angers local resident Mary Madeleno.

“I think they’ve just forgotten about the small towns and communities – everybody doesn’t live in a big city.”

Rita Pickering agrees – she says she was surprised to discover the clinic that housed nurse practitioners and other health care professionals had suddenly been shut down.

“Yes I was, because it hasn’t been open that long.”

The clinic opened in July of 2011 and the Life Lab Services facility located in the same building will continue to operate. But for many in the Township of Springwater, which has approximately 18,000 residents, finding and receiving medical care will mean traveling to other communities. Springwater Mayor Linda Collins says that’s a problem the provincial government has to address.

“We would really want the province to fix this, the whole problem of delivering of health services; it needs to be more available.”

Andrew Shantz is the executive director of the North Simcoe Family Health Services and had this to say on Thursday – “regrettably some individuals will have to travel farther.”

But Shantz says the reason why the Elmvale clinic was beyond North Simcoe’s control – the Ministry of Health provides funding for three nurse practitioners for the area and about six weeks ago two of the three quit.

“As a result our one remaining nurse practitioner was forced to focus her energies and resources to our Midland location.”

Springwater Mayor Collins says although the closing of the Elmvale clinic is a major inconvenience, it will not interfere with the communities continuing efforts to lure the doctors to the area.

When health care professionals chose to move on for personal reasons, there’s little that can be done. But the North Simcoe Health Team says its number one priority now is to hire some nurse practitioners to replace the ones that just moved on but they can’t say where those practitioners will be working.