275,000 people were attached to primary care in the first year<\/a> of the push to clear the backlog of people seeking care.<\/p>\nLast week, the Ford government said it would put forward another $15 million to help meet its pledge in the London area, which it said would help connect just over 33,000 people.<\/p>\n
Even so, demand remains high. The latest data from late 2025 put the number of people without a family doctor in the London region at roughly 91,000.<\/p>\n
![\"Amber](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1778190737_926_default.jpg\")
Amber Alpaugh-Bishop photographed outside the CBC London newsroom on May 7, 2026. (Alessio Donnini\/CBC News)<\/p>\n
Alpaugh-Bishop said that number has likely dropped closer to 80,000 as more physicians are recruited.<\/p>\n
“We have a primary care physician recruitment program here, and it’s led by Chantelle Wragg. In the last six months, she has successfully recruited eight new primary care physicians to this community, and she has 21 more that she’s in conversation with,” Alpaugh-Bishop said.<\/p>\n
But while physicians steadily stream into the region, potential patients overlooking the preferred avenue to connect them with those doctors is less than ideal, Alpaugh-Bishop said.<\/p>\n
Gap between available doctors and patients <\/p>\n
Despite that demand, the province\u2019s centralized waitlist remains underused locally. <\/p>\n
Health Care Connect (HCC) is Ontario\u2019s system for matching patients with available primary care providers. But a late-2025 report from the province\u2019s auditor general found many clinics were filling their rosters more quickly on their own than through the system.<\/p>\n
“I’m trying to tell people, tell your friends at to call 811 if they need a physician. If you work in a hospital, tell [patients without doctors] to call 811,” Alpaugh-Bishop said.<\/p>\n
“I will acknowledge that people have had past experience with that program where it took quite some time. We didn’t have a lot of physicians and nurse practitioners, so we had patients registering but not providers. There was a delay, but our situation is totally different now.”<\/p>\n
LISTEN | London doctors are looking for patients:<\/p>\n
London Morning8:43London doctors are now looking for patients<\/p>\n
While thousands of Londoners still lack a family doctor, a recruitment push has led to new physicians looking for patients. Amber Alpaugh-Bishop, the executive director for the Middlesex-London Ontario Health Team, provides an update on their progress.Clinics also recruiting patients directly<\/p>\n
Alpaugh-Bishop isn’t the only person encouraging locals to sign up for Healthcare Connect.<\/p>\n
Dan Muldoon, a registered practical nurse and director of the Thompson Medical Centre (TMC), said his organization currently has about 3,000 open spots \u2014 a number expected to grow to roughly 9,000 by August. <\/p>\n
The clinic has recruited seven new doctors since the start of 2026. <\/p>\n
“I would definitely encourage people to sign up [to HCC]. It’s an avenue to get a physician faster. For us, we believe a two-pronged approach is best, and that means accepting patients from Health Care Connect while also reaching patients ourselves,” Muldoon said.<\/p>\n
TMC is one of several clinics that have been advertising available spots on doctor rosters, lately.<\/p>\n
“Now is the greatest time to get a doctor compared to in the past. There are so many different physicians and so many different offices, including ourselves, accepting across the city,” Muldoon said.<\/p>\n
Muldoon suggested people looking for primary care should keep an eye on the internet, especially local social media pages.<\/p>\n
“Facebook seems to be the hot market where it gets posted the most,” he said. “And if someone really can’t find a doctor close to them, the Health Care Connect list is the best option after that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":["post-654594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654594","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=654594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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