Meet some of the 6 million Canadians who don't have a family doctor
CBC
More than six million Canadians say they do not have regular access to primary care physicians. It's a crisis the experts say has caused untold harm and cases of preventable death and disease — and it's expected to get worse before it gets better.
In Canada's system of publicly funded health care, family doctors play a crucial gatekeeper role by coordinating care and ensuring access to preventative medicine, drugs, diagnostics and specialists.
Unlike in the U.S. — where some insured people can go directly to specialists and clinics — Canadians must go through family doctors or general practitioners at walk-in clinics if they need a particular kind of care.
In Canada, having a family doctor isn't a perk. It's a necessity.
As long as so many people lack easy access to primary care, population health can be expected to get worse, said Dr. David Barber, a family doctor and chair of the general and family practice section of the Ontario Medical Association (OMA).
"I really worry about this. I get really scared thinking about the patients that don't have access to the health-care system," Barber told CBC News.
He said the multi-billion-dollar health accord signed between Ottawa and the provinces — which offers money for more medical residency positions and recognition of foreign medical credentials — is a good start, but the numbers suggest governments need to do much more.
The population is growing and family doctors are retiring en masse. More than 1.7 million people in Ontario have a family doctor who is over the age of 65, Barber said.
As a result, the OMA predicts one in four people in the province will be without a "cradle to grave" family doctor by 2026.
"This is the way I frame it — would it be acceptable for 25 per cent of all kids to not go to school because there aren't enough teachers?" Barber said.
"There's a lot of harm, there's a lot of morbidity and mortality happening because of this," he added. "We're going to see so much more sickness."
As CBC News has reported, the number of medical residency positions — a crucial pipeline that brings more doctors into the system — has been stagnant for the past decade. The number of medical students choosing family medicine has plunged.
The precious few residency spots available are sometimes given to foreign students from wealthy countries like Saudi Arabia, who are contractually obligated to go home after finishing their residency.
A tangle of red tape makes it exceedingly difficult for Canadian-born doctors who were trained abroad to come home and practise.
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