Stiles: the Conservatives’ refusal to fix the family doctor crisis is costing all of us more
Good health care is a right, not a privilege, says NDP leader Marit Stiles.
Behind the over two million people in Ontario without a family doctor, you hear the same stories. Stories of seniors whose doctor retired with no one to replace them. Stories of a new parent whose doctor closed her practice to work at a for-profit medical clinic. The latter, where a hefty subscription fee is standard practice, seem to be popping up everywhere these days.
Everyone in Ontario, no matter where they live, should have access to good, timely primary medical care. Care they should never have to pay for.
People across Ontario are feeling the effects of the family doctor shortage. Smaller cities and rural and northern communities are taking the hardest hit. In Sault Ste Marie, a group of family doctors retiring has resulted in 10,000 seniors losing access to care, with another 6,000 expected to lose care later this year.
In Kingston, almost 30,000 people do not have a family doctor.
In Perth, just 10 doctors provide care to 10,000 people.
The ripple effects of the primary care shortage are being felt across a health care system that’s already in crisis. Our already short-staffed hospitals are becoming even more inundated, and without family doctors, people tend to be sicker when they arrive.
The government’s cuts to health care are having serious, even life-threatening, consequences. Families are showing up at their local ER desperate for care only to find it temporarily shuttered due to a shortage of staff. People are missing life-saving cancer follow-up appointments. Parents are unable to take their new-borns for regular check-ups. People are dying while waiting for crucial surgeries.
We believe fixing the primary care shortage is possible.
The NDP has been listening to doctors, health care workers and health care experts, and bringing forward good, simple solutions to fix the mess we’re in. But Doug Ford keeps proving to be a massive roadblock. His government voted down an NDP motion for the government to connect every family doctor to a primary care team consisting of administrative and interdisciplinary health staff.
Right now, only a third of family doctors are connected to interdisciplinary teams. Expanding these teams is a move that doctors say will lessen the burden of paperwork that is causing many to leave the sector. A move that would ensure doctors spend less time on paperwork and more time with patients. A move that would retain more family doctors who are leaving due to burnout and incentivize family medicine for new medical graduates.
Beyond primary care, the government is refusing to fund the needs of our health care system.
Ford’s 2024 budget is woefully short on the spending we need to remedy crisis of the government’s own making. Nurses and other health care workers have, for years, been driven from the field because Doug Ford wasted five years and billions of dollars fighting in court to keep their wages down. But the budget comes nowhere close to addressing the massive health care staffing crisis this has caused in our hospitals.
Hospitals have been forced to look to private agencies to hire nurses and other health care workers, at a cost that’s typically double or triple what it would cost to employ them in the public system.
By the end of the 2022 fiscal year, the University Health Network spent $6.7 million on agency nurses, compared to $776,000 in 2021. Oak Valley Health, which runs Markham Stouffville Hospital, spent over $4 million on agency nurses.
There are operating rooms in our public hospitals sitting unused. Rather than paying doctors to perform more surgeries, the Conservatives are expanding the number of for-profit clinics that can perform the same surgeries. This will not only further drive health care workers out of public hospitals, but it will cost all of us more money. The government provides a for-profit clinic more funding to perform certain OHIP-covered surgeries than it does to Ontario’s public hospitals to perform the same procedures.
By opening the floodgates to privatization, Doug Ford is sending a clear message that in his Ontario, public health care is very much up for sale. For-profit companies are incentivized to make a buck off sick people.
Ignoring our primary care shortage will only make it worse. Our population is aging, with health care needs that are increasingly getting more complex. In addition to the over two million Ontarians without a family doctor, another 1.7 million are looked after by a doctor who is 65 or older.
It’s time for Conservatives to fix public health care and stop making us pay for their mistakes. Start by spending the money needed to fix the staffing crisis they created. Then move to fixing the problems driving family doctors away.
Stop allowing companies to profit off sick people. Show us that you believe that everyone in this province has the right to quality health care when and where they need it, without having to pay.
Good health care is a right, not a privilege.
Marit Stiles is the leader of Ontario’s NDP. We’ve invited Ontario’s three opposition leaders to submit an op ed on a topic of their choice for launch week.