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The majority of Albertans who saw a family doctor recently were satisfied with their visit — but many have yet to find one.
That’s according to the latest Alberta Medical Association (AMA) “State of Health Care” report, produced through an online survey of 1,100 adult Albertans conducted by ThinkHQ Public Affairs from May 12 to 19, 2026.
The report suggests 82 per cent of Albertans surveyed saw a family doctor in the past year, and 81 per cent of those with a family doctor reported high-quality interactions during their last appointment.
“We do know that family physicians remain the foundation of our health-care system,” said AMA president Brian Wirzba.
“They reported that those interactions were generally a very high quality — when they could actually have access,” he said.
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Alberta continues to face a primary care crisis, with hundreds of thousands of people in need of a doctor. The provincial government is rolling out its dual practice model to allow some doctors to work in both the public and private system. While the plan doesn’t apply to family doctors, that’s not stopping a pair of Edmonton physicians from trying to meet the growing need for care. Their solution is a new membership-based medical clinic. CBC’s Alicia Asquith went to check out how it works, and how it fits into the province’s health-care system.
The AMA report says the percentage of Albertans without a family doctor has dropped slightly to 16 per cent, down from 18 per cent in 2025 — but for the segment of the population still actively looking for a doctor, nearly three in 10 report that no physicians are accepting new patients where they live, pointing to ongoing shortages in rural and smaller communities.
“The real challenge is not the quality. It is that access, with only about half of the patients saying that they get a timely appointment when they need it.”
The report suggests that for people who do have a family doctor, only 53 per cent say they can get an appointment in a timely manner.
And 78 per cent of those who go to walk-in clinics say they’re doing it because they can’t access family doctors quickly enough.
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A new report says family doctors and pediatricians are increasingly bearing the weight of Canada’s mental health crisis, including counselling and psychotherapy, as mental health positions are not being filled fast enough to relieve the strain.
“Going to walk-in centres and urgent care centres are a bit of a safety valve, but it’s not ideal,” Wirzba said. “And so it is very concerning for us.”
The study found a link between access to a family doctor and overall satisfaction with the health-care system, with Albertans that have good access to their family physician reporting 72 per cent satisfaction — significantly higher than 53 per cent satisfaction in those still looking for one.
“We do know that the highest quality care systems have patients linked to a family physician who understands their history,” Wirzba said.
He said that while recruitment has brought new doctors to the province, there is still an overall under-supply relative to patient needs.
“When patients go and see multiple different practitioners and there’s no coordination, we see duplication of care. We sometimes see inconsistent prescribing and testing, and that’s very … problematic. It’s hostile to the system and it’s not ideal for the patients,” Wirzba said.
“We also know that patients who are linked with a family physician have much higher regard and comfort in the overall health-care system, mainly because they understand the value of that linkage to a comprehensive family medicine physician.”
Situation ‘dismaying’: family doctor
Dr. Lee Green, professor of family medicine at the University of Alberta, said the situation reflects a shortage of family physicians and the system’s flawed structure.
“That’s dismaying, and that is a reflection of a couple of issues in our health-care system in Alberta, but in Canada broadly, and in fact in the United States as well,” said Green, who is a practicing family physician in Edmonton.
“Family physicians have to take care of more patients than they can handle because they don’t have the team around them to help them handle it,” he said.
“So people can’t get in to see their family doctor, so they go to emergency care or walk-in which, you know, leads to higher rates of of hospitalizations and emergencies than we would have if we had a better structured system.”
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A University of Calgary report suggests doctors’ availability remains a bottleneck in accessing virtual care and points to expanding team-based care as a possible solution. This Calgary doctor says that type of care isn’t always paid.
Green pointed to his own research suggesting that if a patient cannot see their own doctor, then seeing one of their doctor’s partners in the same clinic is a much better alternative than going to a walk-in or urgent care clinic.
“A team-based model is more efficient,” he said. “In a team-based care model, a doctor can see a larger panel of patients and provide better access. But you have to be able to fund and support and structure a team-based model.”
“In fact, if we had a fully team-based care model … we wouldn’t have a shortage of family physicians. We’re not using the docs we have to best advantage,” he said.