The office of health minister Sylvia Jones has responded to Wednesday's Sudbury.com story about the concern over the shortage of doctors in Ontario, in particular Northern Ontario.
The story quoted Northern Ontario physicians Dr. Sarah Newbury, Dr. Lauren Laakso and NOSM University president Dr. Sarita Verma as saying the shortage of physicians is creating a crisis for health care in rural and remote communities in the North.
Press secretary Hannah Jensen from the health minister's office responded to say that Ontario residents enjoy a level of patient-doctor care better than most of the country.
“Ontario is leading the country with 90 per cent of Ontarians having a primary care provider. Since 2018 we have grown our healthcare workforce by over 63,000 new nurses and 8,000 new physicians," said Jensen.
"But we know more needs to be done, that’s why earlier this year our government launched Your Health," she added.
Jensen said Ontario's plan is to connect people with more convenient care that is closer to home.
"We have launched the largest medical school expansion in 15 years, most recently adding an additional 14 undergraduate and 22 postgraduate seats at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM University), (and) expanded the Northern Ontario Resident Streamlined Training and Reimbursement (Nor-Star) program,” she said.
This program aims to train more physicians in Northern Ontario by offering incentives like cost-reimbursement of travel and accommodation for medical residents on elective in Northern Ontario, and investing $32 million for resident salaries and benefits at NOSM, said Jensen.
"We are also investing $30 million to create new interprofessional primary care teams in communities that need it most. This is the largest expansion of these teams since they were established," said Jensen.
Len Gillis covers health care and mining for Sudbury.com.
