Survey finds number of people in N.B. with family doctor falls again to 77 per cent

New Brunswick is still seeing a drop in the number of people with a family doctor.

The number of New Brunswickers who report having a family doctor continues to decline, albeit at a slower pace, according to a new report out Wednesday.

The New Brunswick Health Council survey found 77 per cent of New Brunswickers had a permanent primary health-care provider in 2024, compared to 79 per cent in 2023. The report noted 2024 was the first year since 2017 where a significant decline hadn’t been recorded on the metric.

In 2017, the survey found 93 per cent of New Brunswickers had a primary care provider, with that percentage falling to 90 per cent in 2020, and 85 per cent in 2022.

“The efforts of the last few years have helped to control that erosion in attachment,” said Stéphane Robichaud, CEO of the New Brunswick Health Council. “That’s good news.

“But we still have to do some work on other dimensions of quality.”

The survey found there had been no improvement since 2002 in the amount of time New Brunswickers were waiting to access a primary care provider, with only one in three citizens getting an appointment within five days.

“We don’t compare very well with the rest of the country and there are ramifications from that,” said Robichaud. “We’re still seeing a lot of people in emergency rooms for topics that should actually be addressed in a primary care setting.”

Robichaud said improvements in adding more physicians were up against a growing New Brunswick population (increasing by about 87,000 people since 2017) and aging demographics (leading to physician retirements and patients who have more health-care needs).

Health Minister Dr. John Dornan said the survey’s results weren’t a surprise to him and promised improved numbers in the months to come.

In January, the province set a goal to have 85 per cent of New Brunswickers assigned a primary care provider by 2028.

“I think that’s pessimistic,” Dornan said to reporters on Wednesday. “I would like to do much better than that over our next mandate.”

Dornan declined to offer a percentage he thought was achievable.

“I am not going to over promise and under deliver. We’ll settle at 85 per cent. I am optimistic we can do better than that,” he said.

Dornan said the province’s flagship election promise of adding more collaborative health-care clinics would help in the objective of connecting more people to doctors and getting them faster treatment.

The province also set a goal in January to increase the number of New Brunswickers who are able to receive care from their primary provider within five days (from 31.4 per cent to 37.4 per cent by 2028).

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