OMA urges province to fix northern doctor shortage

The Ontario Medical Association is calling on the province to address the physician shortage in the north by developing a physician workforce strategy.

According to the OMA, around 2.3 million people in the province don’t have a family doctor, and that access to primary and emergency care is especially challenging in northern and rural Ontario.

One of the recommendations being made by the association is the creation of a provincial pool of locums.

"(It would support) the communities of the north that wouldn't otherwise have access to specialty care or threatened to have their emergency departments and family departments closed in one way, shape or another," said OMA president Dr. Andrew Park.

Locums would provide some temporary relief, and the Dean of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine points out that a long-term fix is needed.

"People need to feel that they can make a commitment to the community they settle in and practise in," said Dr. Sarita Verma.

"A two- to four-week locum is an easy sort of come in and do something, but there's no followup, there's no continuity. And the patients don't feel connected to that physician at all."

The OMA is developing a tool using artificial intelligence to project future healthcare needs and capacity, which will include how many doctors and specialists will be required to meet patient needs in a specific geographic area. 

In response to this article, a spokesperson for the health minister provided an emailed statement. 

"Ontario is leading the country with 90 per cent of Ontarians having a primary care provider. Since 2018, we have grown our healthcare workforce by over 63,000 new nurses and 8,000 new physicians, but we know more needs to be done, that’s why earlier this year our government launched Your Health," Hannah Jensen said.

"Our plan is connecting Ontarians across the province to convenient care, closer to home. We have launched the largest medical school expansion in 15 years, most recently adding an additional 14 undergraduate and 22 postgraduate seats at the (Northern) Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM), expanded the Northern Ontario Resident Streamlined Training and Reimbursement (Nor-Star) program which removes barriers to training more physicians in northern Ontario to include cost reimbursement of travel and accommodation for medical residents on elective in northern Ontario, invested $32 million for resident salaries and benefits at NOSM, expanded the Peer to Peer Emergency Department program that provides physicians in rural and remote communities with 24/7 access to on-demand, real-time support and coaching from highly experienced emergency physicians across Ontario via virtual channels, and we are supporting over 80 physicians through the Northern and Rural Recruitment and Retention Initiative (NRRRI), which provides grants to physicians who open a practice in rural or northern Ontario. We are also investing $30 million to create new interprofessional primary care teams in communities that need it most, this is the largest expansion of these teams since they were established.

This is in addition to the work we have done to break down barriers for international healthcare workers to make it faster and easier to work in Ontario, including the new Practice Ready Ontario Program that will add 50 new physicians by next year and introduced As of Right credentials which allows physicians and other healthcare workers registered in other provinces and territories to begin working in Ontario immediately."

The ministry of health started negoitations with OMA on Oct. 12 to determine the physician services agreement, Jensen said.