Family medicine in crisis

The province is not listening to the calls for help from family doctors.

Several doctors spoke about the crisis in family medicine to Belleville City Council on Monday.

Dr. Jennifer Whelan says family doctors are the backbone of the health care system and access to a family physician decreases emergent hospital emissions by up to 30% and diagnoses diseases like cancer sooner.

Dr. Whelan noted that 52% of medical services in Canada are provided by family doctors but they benefit from only 5.7% of health spending.

She adds they are essentially running a small business but with the Ministry of Health setting their fees, they aren’t able to increase those fees to cover their growing costs.

Dr. Whelan says family doctors basically receive about $38 per patient seen but the Ontario Medical Association says they should be getting almost $100.

With the chronic defunding, they can’t afford the staff they need to help run their practices, putting more administrative work on their plates leading to increased waiting times and less time to see patients.

She says they are asking the city for help because their repeated calls to the Ministry and local MPPs Todd Smith and Ric Bresee continue to go unanswered.

“And to be honest, it’s becoming an unsustainable business model and that’s why we’re in such crisis mode too because so many young graduates are not picking family medicine as a career. Those of us who have chosen it as a career, a lot of doctors are closing their offices because they literally cannot afford to keep them open.”

Dr. Whelan says about 2.2 million Ontarians currently don’t have a family physician with that number expected to grow to three million, or one in five people, in the next two years.

Dr. Kaci Carter says while it’s wonderful the city works so hard to recruit family physicians, they also need to pay attention to retention which other communities are starting to do.

“Peterborough also has a $5,000 per year grant that they are suggesting. Norwood, a small town that actually has a clinic building funded through the city where the staff for the family doctors is also allowed to be salaried through the city, given benefits, pension through the city.”

During the meeting, Councillor Chris Malette brought forward a resolution asking the province take immediate action to ensure family physicians are properly compensated and reduce their administrative burdens.

The resolution, which was approved by council, will be forwarded to the Premier, the Ministry of Health, MPPs Smith and Bresee and every provincial municipality with a request that provincial government respond within 30 days.

“This isn’t our purview. We shouldn’t be having to do this. But the simple fact of the matter is, as Dr. Whelan said, the province simply isn’t listening. Our own members aren’t listening. Our own MPP, Minister Todd Smith, has been ignoring people right, left and centre on this matter.”

Malette is also asking for a staff report at a future meeting of council with recommendations on how to remedy the struggles faced by local family doctors.

Meanwhile Bay of Quinte riding MPP and Minister of Energy Todd Smith says he talks to local doctors regularly but can’t provide further information at this time due to the fact that negotiations on a new contract are currently underway between the Ontario Medical Association and the provincial government.