Shortage of doctors to double by 2026
There are already 32,000 people in the Peterborough area without a family MD
The Ontario College of Family Physicians is warning that upwards of 63,000 people in the Peterborough area could be without a family doctor by 2026.
Currently, there are already 32,000 residents in the area who are without a family doctor, noted Dr. Madura Sundareswaran, a Peterborough family doctor.
“What we are facing is a critical primary-care crisis. The recent projections shared by the OCFP are very concerning. To have approximately 63,000 people without access to a family doctor is really going to impact people’s overall health care,” she said.
“We know that family physicians are a critical part of an individual’s access to health care. Although we have a public health-care system, it becomes completely inaccessible without having family physicians, who are the gatekeepers to help people navigate through all the different specialists.”
Sundareswaran noted there are three main causes that are influencing the shortage of family physicians.
“The first thing is we are struggling to retain family physicians in the current work environment. There’s data to show that family physicians are spending upwards of 19 hours a week on administrative duties when, really, they should be doing direct patient care,” she said. “And a lot of these administrative duties are things that could be delegated to somebody else.”
The second factor is difficulty recruiting new family doctors, as the
“We are talking about changing the health of the community by having more family doctors.
DR. MADURA SUNDARESWARAN FAMILY DOCTOR
compensation is not competitive relative to other sectors in the field.
“New graduates are choosing other alternatives at the hospitals or other clinics where the cost of operating is much lower and wages are more competitive,” she said. “These students are looking at paying off significant amounts of debt, so this is definitely a factor to consider.”
OCFP is hoping the government will provide better team support to ensure family doctors can provide patients with the care they need at the right time and from the most appropriate health care provider.
“Medicine is much more complex now than it was 10 to 15 years ago. We have data to prove this; people are sicker, people are on more medications, we have diseases that didn’t exist before that now do,” she said. “And as medicine as a whole becomes more and more complicated, the system hasn’t actually adapted to accommodate that workflow.”
If the situation is not addressed, the family medicine crisis will continue to get worse, leading to less preventive treatment and greater strain on hospitals, explained Sundareswaran. The consequences of this shortage are already being seen, though more serious repercussions likely won’t be observable for another five to 10 years, she added.
“Having a family doctor in communities can increase life expectancy, can decrease death from heart disease, lung disease or even cancer,” she said. “So, we are talking about changing the health of the community by having more family doctors.”
This is a problem across Ontario and OCFP is anticipating that the number of unattached patients in the Niagara, York and Durham regions are expected to double or nearly double in the next two years. However, Sundareswaran stated that smaller and medium-sized communities will be more heavily impacted.
“Small and medium-sized communities are much more impacted by these gaps than say a large urban centre like Toronto,” she said. “And people who are vulnerable or marginalized are more represented in this number consistently across the board, regardless of community size.”
Sundareswaran explained that the provincial government should work to strengthen the public health care system as opposed to looking at privatization.
“We should be putting our heads together to preserve the public health-care system,” she said. “Before opening the gate to other private offices.”