The Ontario Ministry of Health said action is being taken to help improve access to family doctors as well as working on ways to improve problems related to physician burnout and the overload of paperwork.
The ministry was responding to a Sudbury.com story published Friday about an Ontario Medical Association (OMA) news conference where several Ontario doctors said they were quitting their family medicine practice.
In that story, OMA members said the family medicine system was broken and no longer sustainable.
Responding by email, Hannah Jensen, the deputy director of communications for the Ministry of Health, said the current Conservative government is taking steps to improve access to physicians.
“Under the leadership of Premier Ford, our government is taking action, building on our progress adding over 10,400 new physicians since 2018, including a nearly 10-per-cent increase in family doctors, by launching the largest medical school expansion in 15 years," said Jensen.
She said the med school expansion program has added hundreds of undergraduate and medical seats across Ontario. This includes new medical school seats at the University of Ottawa where 60 per cent of the seats are dedicated to family medicine.
The expansion also included additional learning spaces at NOSM University, the former Northern Ontario School of Medicine, which has campuses in Sudbury and Thunder Bay.
Jensen added that the Practice Ready Ontario Program, which is open to international students, will add 50 new doctors to Ontario this year.
"While Ontario is leading the country with 90 per cent of Ontarians having a primary care provider, we understand that a key part of our Your Health plan is to ensure all Ontarians who want access to primary care are able to," said Jensen.
"That is why we are investing $110 million to launch the largest expansion of new interdisciplinary primary care teams which will connect 98 per cent of Ontarians to a primary care provider," she added.
Jensen also said the Ontario government is working with the OMA to address the issue of burnout, another issue that was raised during the OMA news conference last week.
She added that the ministry is working to improve OMA-endorsed priority government forms.
"We have also launched an initiative called Patients Before Paper Work (PB4P) to further tackle the administrative burden on physicians while reducing the risk of delays of delays in diagnosis and treatment."
Len Gillis covers health care as well as the mining industry for Sudbury.com.
