Toronto, Jan. 27, 2025 – Ontario’s doctors welcome the significant investment today from the provincial government for primary care but stress immediate action needs to take place to ensure every Ontarian has a family doctor.
Ontario’s health system is in crisis and investments such as this one are important, but we need to ensure they have an impact now. There are 2.5 million people in the province without access to a family doctor and that number is going to climb to 4.4 million in a year.
“We have been fortunate to meet with Dr. Philpott and Health Minister Sylvia Jones already and we fully support their work and look forward to co-designing a system where every Ontarian has a family doctor. At the same time, more needs to be done to retain and attract family physicians,” said Kimberly Moran, Ontario Medical Association CEO. “We are ready, willing, and able to use our resources to ensure this work succeeds and ensure every Ontarian is connected to family medicine.”
There are physician shortages across the system that are impacting access to timely and effective patient care. Investing in teams is important but the dollars have to have an immediate impact to help attach people to family doctors. The OMA is committed to helping Dr. Philpott and the province achieve the goal of ensuring every Ontarian has a family physician, but the immediacy of this cannot be understated and work needs to start now.
Ontario’s doctors are calling for the family practice model to be updated and funded appropriately to ensure physicians remain in place, attract others to come back to the field, and for new graduates to pursue a life-long career as a family doctor. The current funding models for family medicine in Ontario are falling way behind other jurisdictions across the country.
"We need models of care that recognize the changing needs of patients and doctors alike,” said Dr. Dominik Nowak, President, Ontario Medical Association. “Patients are now more complex and acutely ill when they access care, and our current approaches to funding do not reflect the care patients need and deserve. We must modernize support for family medicine and many other specialties to make sure Ontarians can be confident in their health system.”
This is not a problem that recruitment and training alone can solve. The system has to ensure there is sufficient funding to avoid physicians leaving their practices. Since 2018 for example, about 8,600 physicians have either retired or left their practices. For every three physicians added to the system, two are lost. The challenges are real and are impacting every community across Ontario. This investment is important but patients and physicians need to see the impact today. The future health and wellbeing of the province needs to be addressed with a great sense of urgency.
Ontario Medical Association represents Ontario’s 43,000-plus physicians, medical students and retired physicians, advocating for and supporting doctors while strengthening the leadership role of doctors in caring for patients. Our vision is to be the trusted voice in transforming Ontario’s health-care system.
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