CMA calls for better access to family physicians, reduced wait times as premiers meet in Winnipeg

From staffing shortages to lengthy waitlists, Canada’s health-care system needs drastic improvement, according to the Canadian Medical Association (CMA), an national organization of voluntary physicians and medical learners who advocate for improvements on national health matters.

On July 6, the group released a list of measured recommendations to tackle some of the flaws in the system.

The proposed targets from the CMA are timely, as Canadian premiers meet in Winnipeg this week for their annual summer gathering, where they’ll discuss how the $46 billion offered by the federal government for health-care support will be invested, among other agenda items.

“It's pretty common for us to hear politicians talk about how it's another person's problem,” said Dr. Alika Lafontaine, president of the CMA, in an interview with CTV Your Morning on Monday. “What's important is for people to take responsibility for the reality that a lot of patients across the country just don't have regular access to health care. And when they go for care, they often have to go to places that are already overwhelmed, like emergency rooms.”

The CMA is advocating for specific target goals across Canada, including increasing the number of family physicians to 7,500 over five years and 15,000 over 10 years, as well as reducing the median wait time for mental health and substance services to two weeks by 2028, and to one week by 2033.

Before the government funds are handed out, however, it’s up to each province and territory to create a plan for how the money will be used to hit timelines and targets, and ultimately improve access to care.

The government health deal also includes an increase to the annual federal health transfers, which is funding used to help provinces pay for their health-care systems.

Lafontaine says it’s important for Canadians to understand that the functionality of the aid. “When we are giving these recommendations, we're really focused on changing the way that we look at how we measure the health-care system, because at the end, that changes the way that patients experience the health-care system.”

According to Lafontaine, less than 50 per cent of patients are able to find a primary care provider within 24 to 48 hours of needing one in Canada. To tackle this, one of the CMA’s recommendations includes increasing the number of Canadians with a regular primary care provider from 85 per cent to 90 per cent within the next five years, and to 95 per cent within 10 years.

Other targets set by the organization include eliminating hospital emergency department closures within three years, and increasing the amount of priority procedures delivered within medically acceptable wait times to 80 per cent within five years and to 90 per cent within 10 years. The CMA is also calling on provincial and territorial governments to make it possible for 75 per cent of Canadians to access their electronic health records by 2028, and for 90 per cent of the population to be able to do so by 2033.

Dr. Kathleen Ross, president-elect of the CMA, says that while many issues in Canada’s health-care system were made worse by the pandemic, they have been brewing for years.

“Many of these problems have been evolving for the last several decades. So to hang all of this on COVID-19, I think is missing some of the larger picture,” Ross said in an interview with CTV News Channel on Monday. “We definitely need to address our human health resource challenges. We don't have enough physicians, nurses and many other health-care providers to meet the needs of Canadians in our current way of working.”

Staffing shortage issues became more apparent across Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic as health-care workers were inundated with patients and dealt with burnout.

And while the pandemic may no longer be considered a global health emergency by the World Health Organization, some health-care facilities around the country remain short-staffed. In Victoria, the Saanich Peninsula Hospital emergency room, for example, will remain closed overnight for the next two months due to staffing shortages.

Ross also says that the CMA is looking to modernize how Canada’s health-care systems handle data, including how they track the number of physicians, nurses and other care providers, as well as the delivery of care. This will be done by implementing a more collaborative, team-based approach among doctors, the CMA says.

As for Lafontaine, he said he is hopeful that Canada’s overall health-care system will start to see a shift as it has in the past when strategic measures were implemented.

“We have a way to fix these problems. We just have to make sure we stay around the table and actually get focused on doing things differently,” he says.