Improve healthcare: More family doctors

We spend a lot of time kvetching and tweeting about healthcare policy errors. Have you ever said: “How can they make that stupid decision?” or “This will mess up things instead of helping!” It may seem cathartic to complain but it accomplishes very little. Maybe we should consider coming up with solutions and then spend our energies “selling” the ideas to those who make decisions. Here is the greatest opportunity: Ontario is heading toward an election on June 2, 2022. Many incredible organizations including the Ontario Medical Association, the Section of General and Family Medicine and the Ontario College of Family Physicians have prepared clear guidance based on evidence for improving healthcare for all Ontario citizens. This is my summary and a challenge to you to amplify the message (if you agree). Read: Negation driving many Ontario family doctors to distraction This is the first of a three-part series on improving health care at a foundational level. It is not an exhaustive treatise but rather focused on primary care. Investments in primary care have greater value at reducing all-cause mortality and improving all health parameters. Here are the three principles as follows: Ensure every Ontarian gets a family doctor. Ensure family doctors actually deal with patients and not do more administrative work. Ensure every family doctor works in a team. This article will deal with the first point: Ensure everyone gets a family doctor. That is, the value of increasing attachment of patients to a family doctor on the overall health outcomes of the patient, the community and the province. Simple facts: Patients with family doctors go to the ER less, have early detection and treatment of disease, receive better evidence-based care such as cancer screening, and have less hospitalizations due to chronic disease. Comprehensive family doctors treat patients early in their disease, improve health outcomes and save money! The central role and value of family doctors is clearly stated by Dr. Anson Dong. How many family doctors in Ontario? 14, 962. And decreasing as less medical students are choosing family medicine. How many family doctors in Ontario are doing comprehensive care? 70% or 10, 473. And this number is falling since more family medicine graduates do focused practice. How many hours per week on average do family doctors in Ontario work? 50 hours per week. Honestly that is an underestimation. How many patients do family doctors in Ontario see weekly? 100 to 125 per week. That does not include all the paperwork we do to keep things going for another 25 to 50 patients per week. How many unattached patients in Ontario? 1.3 million. And growing quickly as we accept refugees, more family doctors retire and less medical students choose family medicine. What is the solution? We need more family doctors working in teams in Ontario. One thousand more family doctors (with the assumption that each family doctor can take 1,300 patients). Ontario ranks seventh among Canadian provinces in number of family doctors per 100,000 patients and, if it were a country, would have one of the lowest doctor-to-population rankings among OECD countries (29 out of 33). CHALLENGE: So what can you do (if you want to change things proactively)? Reach out to your MPP or MPP candidate and use the following TOOL KIT. Write an op-ed using the messaging of OMA or OCFP. Talk to everyone you know that this is a critical issue. Make it an election issue. Dr. Alykhan Abdulla is a comprehensive family doctor working in Manotick, Ont. and a past-chair of the section of general and family practice and lead for longitudinal leadership curricula at Univerity of Ottawa undergraduate medical education. Twitter @AlykhanAbdulla

Improve healthcare: More family doctors

Register for free access or login.

Related Topics