Ontario appoints former federal Liberal health minister to lead primary care team

Former federal health minister Dr. Jane Philpott will head a new team with a mandate to connect every person in Ontario to a primary care provider within the next five years, the province announced Monday.

As of this summer, there were more than 2.5 million Ontarians without a family doctor, according to the Ontario Medical Association. That figure is expected to double in coming years as more physicians retire, the association says.

Philpott, dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Queen's University and director of its School of Medicine, said in a statement that she wants to see 100 per cent of Ontarians attached to a family doctor or nurse practitioner working in a publicly funded team.

"Ontario can build a health system where the guarantee of access to a primary care team is as automatic as the assurance that every child will be assigned to a public school in their neighbourhood," she said.

Philpott's new role as chair of a new primary care action team in the Ministry of Health starts Dec. 1 and the government says she will draw on an interprofessional model of primary care that she designed with colleagues in the Frontenac, Lennox and Addington Ontario Health Team.

The government says the plan will include ensuring better service on weekends and after-hours, reducing administrative burden on family doctors and other primary care professionals and improving connections to specialists and digital tools.

Speaking to reporters at Queen's Park ahead of the return of the legislature, NDP Leader Marit Stiles said she has "enormous respect" for Philpott but questioned if the Progressive Conservatives will implement her team's recommendations.

"This is not a government that listens to experts, let alone their own experts. And we've seen that over and over again," Stiles said. "We will continue to fight to make sure that this government listens to the experts and does the right thing."

Meanwhile, Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie and some of her caucus members criticized the government for what they characterized as inaction on addressing the family doctor shortage in the province. 

Crombie also said she respects Philpott, who was a keynote speaker at the Ontario Liberals annual convention in September, but said she doesn't know if her appointment will bring about tangible change.

"Listen, I have a lot of respect for Dr. Jane Philpott. I think she is an authority on primary care teams. But yet again, we see this government appointing an expert or a panel of experts only to write a report which they will ignore," Crombie said.