Taking action on family medicine

Family medicine is under significant strain. More than 2.5 million people continue to be without a family doctor. At the same time, family doctors are burdened with overwhelming administrative tasks, and lack a team-based infrastructure, many are choosing to leave the specialty – or not consider family practice at all.  

We’re pushing for improvements to primary care through our advocacy, at bilateral tables and in our meetings with government to ensure doctors are at the core of team-based care.  Key to our progress is our work with the government’s Primary Care Action Team (PCAT) as well as ensuring the effective implementation of the new modernized FHO+ model of family medicine, as well as the promise of AI in reducing administrative burden for family doctors.

Engaging with the Primary Care Action Team

With the establishment of the Primary Care Action Team (PCAT), under the leadership of Dr. Jane Philpott, Ontario is poised to make substantial improvements in its primary care system. PCAT is working on a five-year mandate to attach 100 per cent of Ontarians to a family doctor or nurse practitioner working in a publicly funded team, where they receive ongoing, comprehensive, and convenient care.

• Under the Primary Care Action Plan, the government has made a number of announcements including:
• Calls for proposals on team-based care for areas with low patient attachment   
• The Primary Care Act legislation   
• Plans to build or expand 17 community-based primary care clinics 
• Expanded the Learn and Stay grant 

We continue to engage with Dr. Jane Philpott and the PCAT and are  also working closely with our system partners, including the Ministry of Health and Ontario Health, at our established and collaborative tables and committees, such as the Physician Leadership and Engagement Table (PLET) and Digital Health Advisory Table (DHAT) to influence and inform initiatives under PCAT.

Doctors at the core of team-based care

PCAT’s mandate is to attach all Ontarians to a family doctor or primary care team where they can receive ongoing, comprehensive and convenient care. To achieve this goal, we recommend building teams that have the objective of supporting physicians to attach more patients. This can be achieved in two ways:

1. Building and unlocking funds to support physicians in attaching more patients (i.e., Patient Core Team)
2. Collaborating with existing team models to work towards the objective of enabling physicians to direct resources to expand their capacity to attach patients with timely access to care

A patient core team can include nurses (RNs/RPNs), physician assistants (PAs) and/or practice support who directly support physicians by helping them with clinical and administrative tasks, and work to their optimal scope to provide comprehensive, longitudinal primary care to the patient. The entire team is focused on the objective of attaching patients with timely access to quality primary care. With a patient core team, physicians can direct and use resources based on their practice needs and attachment goals and relieve some of the administrative burden they face.

Read our policy paper and summary on building and funding patient core teams. 

The road ahead

As we look towards the next and future rounds of funding, we are strongly advocating to the government and PCAT for funding options that would provide physicians with the necessary supports they need to extend their capacity to attach patients. Doctors in all practice models, as well as different levels of size and organizational sophistication, should be supported in order to attach more patients with timely access to care.

In addition, we are monitoring advances in AI and other technologies which show great promise in reducing administrative burden for physicians, and have the potential to change how clinical care is delivered and what the “back office” looks like. These advancements will influence future compensation models for doctors.

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to take action on issues facing family medicine.