/Family Doctor/ Family Medicine/ Wait Times/ Doctor Shortage/ Administrative Burden/

Why is it so hard to find a family doctor?

More than one in five Canadians – an estimated 6.5 million people – don’t have a family doctor or nurse practitioner they see regularly. It’s a problem that’s getting worse.

Why are family doctors important?

Family doctors are your partners for managing your overall health, and act as your link to other parts of the health system.

Family doctors play a key role in prevention. They look for things that could become problematic down the line and identify health conditions promptly.
Your family doctor gets to know you over time and manages a range of symptoms and conditions across the span of a lifetime.
If you don’t have a family doctor, it’s tougher getting the tests or specialist appointments you need.
You’re also more likely to end up waiting longer for routine care in walk-in clinics or emergency departments.

Why is there a shortage of family doctors?

The number of family doctors isn’t keeping pace with demand. The federal government expects Canada to be short nearly 20,000 family doctors to fill job openings up to 2031.

Many family doctors are retiring. More than 14,000 of Canada’s 48,000 family doctors graduated more than 30 years ago.
Fewer new doctors are choosing family medicine. Less than a third of medical school graduates chose to specialize in family medicine in 2023, down from nearly two in five in 2014. And some 268 spots in family medicine training programs didn’t get filled in the first round of matching graduating students to those spots – the highest number ever.
More family doctors are focusing on niche services. Traditionally, family doctors provided general “cradle to grave” care. But now, nearly 30% mostly work in niche areas like emergency medicine, mental health and maternal care.
Canada’s population is older and sicker. Older patients tend to have higher need for medical services than younger patients.

What’s making family medicine less attractive?

Family doctors are increasingly asked to do more in a day – from caring for older, sicker patients, to completing overwhelming amounts of paperwork, which can lead to burnout. Outdated models of organizing and paying for care are part of the problem.

Managing a family practice alone is a hard sell when doctors are used to working in team environments supported by other professionals during medical training.
The “fee-for-service” model of paying family doctors each time they see a patient doesn’t account for the extra time required by complex patients or the 10 hours a week doctors spend outside their normal workday on paperwork.

Let’s talk solutions

What experts are saying:

Tap the power of teams. Building more primary care teams would allow doctors to share patient care with nurses, physician assistants and other health professionals. In one recent survey of 9,000 people, 90% said they’d be comfortable receiving care this way.
Cut down on paperwork. Canadian doctors spend an estimated 18.5 million hours a year on unnecessary admin tasks. That’s time they could be seeing 55.6 million more patients.
Learn from global leaders. Countries where almost everyone has a family doctor tend to spend more of their health budgets on primary care than Canada. They also automatically register patients with available providers and pay doctors salaries instead of by the visit.