This article originally appeared in the Summer 2023 issue of the Ontario Medical Review magazine.
If you had the chance to improve patient care in your specialty, what would you do and why?
Physician Perspectives is a regular feature in the Ontario Medical Review. Its purpose is to share differing points of view and inspire dialogue among members on important topics of the day. In this edition, we asked members at the OMA’s Priority and Leadership Group meeting in May about one thing they would change to improve patient care in their specialty, and why.
Ottawa
“I think the easiest way to move forward is to make sure that there’s enough of us around. In family medicine, we just need more people to have the time and energy to look after people and move them through. I would triple the number of physicians that I have in my Family Health Organization because for the same number of patients, we would give them an incredible, improved quality of care.”
Mississauga
“Number one would be creating a centralized point for referrals. That’s one of the biggest pain points that I’m facing right now. At the system level, there’s a lot of challenges with health human resources and we don’t have a system that really prioritizes the resources that we have to ensure people are seen in a timely, most appropriate, and efficient way possible.”
Kingston
“We need creative new models immediately to serve patients who don’t have a family doctor. We need to create ways that they can access primary care outside of emergency departments and we need those now. Centres of care for unattached patients, where you don’t officially get a doctor, but you actually have a place that you can go get physician care and maintain your electronic medical record. Doctors would not be committing on a long-term basis to these patients, but would offer extra time that they can put into doing ad hoc care to help fill the care gap.”
Hagersville
“The simple thing would be to almost eliminate these administrative duties and give doctors more agency. More control over how things are organized. I think I’ve seen in the last 20 years or so a decrease in control, more micromanagement from the (Ministry of Health) on down.”
Wawa, Algoma District
“On a clinic day I usually have about 41/2 hours of booked patient visits. And I also will spend two to three hours on non-patient-facing care. If the paperwork and the administrative burden could be done by someone who wasn’t me, in another two hours, I could see 50 per cent more patients. We’re not going to be able to bring 50 per cent more family doctors into this province anytime soon. But if we could reduce the amount of time they’re spending on non-patient-care tasks, we could effectively increase our family doctor workforce.”
Niagara
“I would like to have my own physician assistant in my practice. For me, physician assistants are perfectly aligned with the family doctor offices and they’re such a great addition. Every time I have a physician assistant, I feel happy, I feel relieved. How the family doctor trains the PA is as a mirror image of their practice and physician assistants really do want to play that role, supporting family doctors in direct and indirect patient care.”