{"id":216188,"date":"2025-10-16T01:48:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T01:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/216188\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T01:48:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T01:48:07","slug":"ontario-family-doctor-waitlist-reduced-by-half-health-minister-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/216188\/","title":{"rendered":"Ontario family doctor waitlist reduced by half, health minister says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The progress puts Ontario on track to meet its goal of clearing the original queue of 235,000 by next spring, Health Minister Sylvia Jones said in a statementTijana Martin\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

More than 50 per cent of the Ontarians who were on an official waiting list for a family doctor at the start of the year now have a medical provider, according to the provincial government, which has promised to spend $2.1-billion to combat a long-running shortage of reliable primary care.<\/p>\n

There were approximately 235,000 people on Ontario\u2019s Health Care Connect list on Jan.1. Half of those patients have since been added to the roster of a family doctor or nurse practitioner, Health Minister Sylvia Jones said in a statement Wednesday. <\/p>\n

That puts Ontario on track to meet its goal of clearing the original queue by next spring, she added.<\/p>\n

But the governing Progressive Conservatives still have a long way to go to keep their promise of finding a primary care provider for every Ontarian by 2029.<\/p>\n

As well, another aspect of their health plan \u2013 a last-minute change to how international medical graduates can apply for coveted residency<\/a> training spots in Ontario \u2013 has been heavily criticized by Opposition politicians and doctors\u2019 groups who argue it could reduce the supply of future physicians in the province. <\/p>\n

Ontario resists pressure to reverse new residency rule for international medical graduates<\/a><\/p>\n

At the start of the year, Premier Doug Ford\u2019s<\/a> government said there were about two million Ontarians without a regular primary care provider. <\/p>\n

The Ontario College of Family Physicians, which bases its figures on Ontario Health Insurance Plan billing data, has said there were 2.5 million Ontarians without a family physician as of September, 2023, up from 1.8 million in 2020. <\/p>\n

Either way, Dominik Nowak, a past president of the Ontario Medical Association, visited some communities during his time leading the doctors\u2019 group where half of residents didn\u2019t have a primary care provider. They relied on the local emergency department instead. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s an unacceptable standard,\u201d said Dr. Nowak, a family physician at Women\u2019s College Hospital in Toronto. \u201cPeople should expect more from their health care system, especially the bare minimum of having a connection to a family doctor.\u201d <\/p>\n

Now, however, Dr. Nowak said there is reason for optimism because of reforms spearheaded by Jane Philpott, the former federal health minister appointed last year to revamp primary care in Ontario. <\/p>\n

Dr. Philpott is leading an expansion of multidisciplinary primary care clinics that aim to enroll patients who live nearby, a model inspired by the public school system. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m a family doctor who practises in rural Canada. Here are five things I\u2019ve learned<\/a><\/p>\n

In June, the provincial government announced that $235-million in funding had been awarded to more than 130 new and expanded primary care teams. The province opened another call for proposals for 75 new or enlarged interprofessional health teams last month. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen more hope infused into our health care system because of the attention now around primary care,\u201d Dr. Nowak said. <\/p>\n

Jobin Varughese, president of the Ontario College of Family Physicians, said reducing the Health Care Connect queue counts as one of the early wins of the primary care reform process. <\/p>\n

\u201cNow we need to get to the areas that are going to be probably more complex to fix, but with a higher impact, things like centralized referrals,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

The OCFP and OMA have both called on the provincial government to build a co-ordinated system for referring patients to specialists. As it stands, primary care providers often waste time sending referrals to multiple local specialists without knowing how long the specialists\u2019 waiting lists are or whether they are accepting new additions to their queues. <\/p>\n

Opinion: Does it matter where our future doctors attended high school? Doug Ford seems to think so<\/a><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the OMA, the Canadian Medical Association, which represents doctors across the country, and the College of Family Physicians of Canada were among groups that issued statements this week knocking Ontario for barring graduates of international medical schools from applying in the first round for residency training positions in the province unless they had completed at least two years of high school in Ontario. <\/p>\n

Ms. Jones and her government have defended the change, saying that medical graduates with roots in Ontario are likelier to practice in the province and that graduates of medical schools abroad can apply in a second round. <\/p>\n

With files from Alanna Smith <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: The progress puts Ontario on track to meet its goal of clearing the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,84,392,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-216188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}