Still without a primary care provider?
You’re not the only one. In the Huntsville area, approximately 5,300 residents are on a waiting list for a family doctor or primary care provider. In South Muskoka, there are more than 13,000.
The Ontario government has announced that its goal is to connect all Ontario residents to primary care by 2029.
“I am absolutely thrilled. They are about 15 years behind when they should’ve done this, but at least it’s happening now,” said Huntsville Councillor Bob Stone.
Huntsville Councillor Scott Morrison also spoke to the province’s commitment to connect all Ontario residents to primary care by 2029. “I applaud the province’s direction here. I just hope that they can actually implement it.” Morrison said while spending money on the system is very important, “it’s actually finding the doctors to practice family medicine that is the real challenge.”
He said many doctors are choosing not to practice family medicine. “I’ve heard that doctors spend 30 per cent of their time on administration work now, and they would rather just be helping patients.” He said doctors are telling him the administrative work is more demanding than it has ever been for family doctors. “So what I’m seeing and hearing is that that’s one of the obstacles of getting into family medicine, and so we need to incentivize them at the provincial level to want to be in family medicine.”
Stone said that during the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference that he attended in August, Health Minister Sylvia Jones announced that the province would be allocating more funds and resources to the Northern Ontario School of Medicine to increase the number of doctors practicing in the north.
Morrison and Stone have been working with municipal staff to provide incentives for physicians to relocate to the Huntsville area and take over existing medical practices as doctors retire or establish new ones. The incentive package includes both cash and donated services from the business community. That initiative is meant to complement a regional initiative, one where Muskoka municipalities, including the Town of Huntsville, have recently approved additional funding for a regional recruiter to attract more doctors to Muskoka from all over the world.
But despite all the work to attract doctors to the Huntsville area, the waitlist here has gone up. “It has gone up from just over 4,000 to just over 5,000, but we’ve prevented a lot of people from going on to the waitlist by getting docs to take over existing practices,” noted Stone.
Morrison pointed out that almost all new doctors being recruited for the Huntsville area also want to do emergency hospital work, while maintaining a work-life balance. “So they’re taking on a lot of patients, but not as many patients as the retiring doctors would’ve had.”
Aside from more people moving to the area, Stone said he also believes the list has increased because more people have realized they’d better sign up for the list.
According to Stone, an experienced physician can roster between 1,200 and 1,500 patients on average, while a new doctor can take on approximately 500 to 600 patients. “That’s what we’re seeing,” said Stone, who also noted that it depends on the type of practice. If they take on older patients, those patients will require more resources.
Both Morrison and Stone say conversations are happening with other physicians behind the scenes and are hopeful that the municipality will soon be able to announce the recruitment of more doctors to the Huntsville area.
In the meantime, the shortage of primary care practitioners is putting additional pressure on hospitals, particularly where there are no or limited capacity medical clinics.
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