N.L. health minister says changes to how province delivers family medicine are working

While the Newfoundland and Labrador Medical Association sounds the alarm on an ongoing doctor shortage, accusing the provincial government of undervaluing family medicine, Health Minister John Hogan says the province is on the right track — but acknowledges there is some room for improvement.

Hogan, whose status as health minister went from interim to permanent in a cabinet shuffle Friday afternoon, told CBC News earlier in the day the Health Department uses different metrics than the NLMA to measure primary care use.

He says the provincial government relies on numbers from Patient Connect N.L., a provincial list of individuals who self-identify whether they have access to "primary care" as opposed to a family doctor, said Hogan.

He says 57,000 people in the province currently self-identify as not having access to a primary-care provider. Last year, then health minister Tom Osborne said the province peaked at 48,000 people who said they don't have a primary-care provider.

NLMA president Dr. Steve Major told CBC News on Tuesday that the number of people without a family doctor in the province has increased from 136,000 last year to 175,000 this year — about one-third of the population.

"If we don't reverse this change, where medicine has been undervalued and underrewarded, we're going to continue to have an erosion in the provision of [health] services to patients," said Major.

Hogan says the province is moving toward creating more "family-care teams," — also known as collaborative-care clinics — and he says he expects the number of people without access to primary care will decrease as more clinics are created.

"Over the last year, the number of individuals who now are registered and attached to a family-care team have doubled," he said.

"So we can see that the system is working. Of course it's going to take some time. It's a complete overhaul of how we deliver family practice and family medicine and primary care throughout the province. So it takes time, but it is working."

He says an additional 130 doctors have been practising in the province over the past 12 to 14 months. As well, Hogan says 100 doctors' licences were issued in 2022, with close to 200 issued in 2023.

Hogan says the provincial government is always looking at new and "creative ways" to recruit and retain family doctors, including through a variety of incentives offered to health-care professionals.

"I don't have to tell anyone in Newfoundland and Labrador who's already here, it is a great place to live and work," he said.

"Especially as we modernize our health-care system, I think it just makes it even more attractive to people, to physicians, to nurses and other health-care professionals to come here and work."

Hogan says he is meeting with the NLMA next week.

Download our free CBC News app to sign up for push alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. Click here to visit our landing page.