{"id":14158,"date":"2025-01-25T11:01:25","date_gmt":"2025-01-25T11:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/torontotribune.ca\/index.php\/2025\/01\/25\/an-arms-race-ontario-communities-recruiting-family-doctors-facing-stiff-competition\/"},"modified":"2025-01-25T11:01:25","modified_gmt":"2025-01-25T11:01:25","slug":"an-arms-race-ontario-communities-recruiting-family-doctors-facing-stiff-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/torontotribune.ca\/index.php\/2025\/01\/25\/an-arms-race-ontario-communities-recruiting-family-doctors-facing-stiff-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018An arms race:\u2019 Ontario communities recruiting family doctors facing stiff competition"},"content":{"rendered":"


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With family doctors in short supply<\/a>, Ontario communities are having to be more creative to attract physicians, and it\u2019s only getting more complex.<\/p>\n

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The Ontario College of Family Physicians reported in July that 2.6 million Ontarians are without a family doctor, up from 1.8 million in 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re at a point where too many families, too many Ontarians, do not have access to a family physician, and it\u2019s not getting better because we need to see the solutions that will work to improve the ability for family physicians to see patients be implemented,\u201d said Jobin Varughese, the college\u2019s president.<\/p>\n

Varughese said they are seeing far too many new family physicians who just come out of residency and leave family medicine within the first five years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also have seen studies that 65 per cent of physicians who answered a recent survey are in the next five years thinking of stopping their practice,\u201d the president said.<\/p>\n

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As millions of residents continue to be without family doctors, the pressure it puts on communities to provide adequate health care is only growing.<\/p>\n

In Brockton last week, home to around 10,000 people, residents started lining up at 2 a.m. when they heard a new family doctor would be taking new patients.<\/p>\n

Brockton\u2019s mayor, Chris Peabody, said the new doctor took the first 500 residents who signed up and placed 500 more on a waitlist for when the doctor\u2019s wife, currently practicing in the United States, gets her accreditation to practice medicine in Canada.<\/p>\n

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Of 1,015 who lined up, Peabody said only 15 had to be turned away, with people travelling over 100 km away to try and get on the list.<\/p>\n

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Over the last 20 years, he said their community has had a physicians recruitment committee dedicated to bringing new doctors to the area, with incentives like a municipally-funded medical clinic and student loan forgiveness. In the last year, they recruited six new physicians.<\/p>\n

He said that while he is happy with the success of the communities, they still need to bring three more physicians to the area, pointing to the need to continuously compete against neighbouring areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an arms race between municipalities in Ontario,\u201d Peabody said. \u201cYou just have to fund these committees, you have to find the money, you have to get the volunteers who will do the recruitment and work really hard, and you hope the best for success.\u201d<\/p>\n

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He said when communities don\u2019t have the resources to recruit doctors, they ultimately lose out.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does make me nervous thinking about where are the limits to get the next three doctors? How much more money do we have to put in, and does another town up the ante?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Peabody is pushing for a common funding base for physician recruitment that is available to all municipalities to create a \u201clevel playing field.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Jill Croteau, the physician recruitment specialist for the Niagara Region, said to get doctors to the area, they sometimes have to offer up to a $100,000 signing bonus for commitment to stay for a set amount of time.<\/p>\n

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A spokesperson for the Ford government told Global News that \u201cthe facts speak for themselves,\u201d and said Ontario \u201cleads the country with the highest number of people attached to a primary care provider.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSince 2018, our government has increased our investment in connecting people to primary care by 50 per cent and we are not stopping there,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have launched the largest medical school education system expansion in 15 years, made historic investments to stand up more primary care teams, break down barriers for internationally-trained doctors through programs like Practice Ready Ontario adding 100 new family physicians in rural communities and connecting an additional 120,000 people to care in northern and rural communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Varughese said family doctors need more help if they are going to continue practicing, pointing to artificial intelligence to assist with note-taking and cutting down the amount of time doctors spend on paperwork.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThese sorts of things are going to allow patients to be in front of their family doctor, allowing them to have all of their attention rather than having to keep turning back to the screen to get the next thing that needs to get done,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Croteau said she has heard similar things from doctors.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have heard loud and clear from our physicians that the administrative burdens in their practices have become quite significant. They\u2019re spending more time working on administration than actually seeing patients,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n