OMA says primary care is in crisis

Ontario Medical Association President Dr. Andrew Park, as seen in a virtual interview with CTV News on May 31, 2023. (Bryan Bicknell/CTV News London)

If you don’t have a family doctor, you are not alone.

According to the Ontario Medical Association (OMA), 2.2 million Ontarians are without a family doctor.

That revelation was among the highlights Wednesday of the OMA’s progress report on its “5-Point Plan for Better Health Care” originally released 18 months ago.

The progress report finds the government has taken some action on 51 of the OMA’s 87 recommendations to improve health care in Ontario.

However, a big gap remains in primary care.

The president of the OMA, London, Ont. physician Dr. Andrew Park, said the OMA is focusing on three areas of primary care.

“Primary care, ensuring that every Ontarian has a family doctor, which I hear about every single day. The second one is making sure that doctors can be doctors. We have doctors spending 19 hours a week on administrative tasks that are not needed. So that’s time that can be used around patient care,” said Dr. Park. “The last recommendation is community and home care, ensuring that patients who don’t need to be in a hospital, and can be at home but need the support to be at home, get that support.”

The OMA also stressed that electronic medical records be integrated, “In Ontario, doctors, hospitals, labs, pharmacists, and home and community-care systems all use different digital medical records systems, which do not speak to one another.”