Physician shortage in northern Ontario a dire situation, says doctor
Ontario Medical Association says 2.3 million Ontarians don’t have a family doctor
Family physician Dr. Laurel Laakso says her patients in the northern Ontario town of Sioux Lookout have to wait four to five months to see her.
"And my patients have a family doctor," she said. "Those wait times are quite a bit worse for those who do not."
Laakso was part of a briefing organized by the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) on Wednesday to bring greater attention to a doctor shortage that has affected northern and remote communities the most.
"When you look to our northern communities, that picture becomes even more dire," Laakso continued.
"As many communities go months and months without a single physician visit in community."
WATCH | Dr. Laurel Laakso describes the situation in the north
Laakso said one reason for the lack of primary care in northern communities is because the small number of primary health-care providers in those areas are the same doctors who staff the emergency departments in rural hospitals.
In addition to her family practice, Laakso is chief of staff at the Sioux Lookout Meno Ya Win Health Centre, which serves people from 31 First Nations who must fly in for health care.
"We're in a position where we're forced to take physicians out of primary care in order to keep these essential hospital services running," Laakso said.
The OMA says 2.3 million people in the province don't have a family doctor, and it calls the situation "especially challenging" in northern and rural Ontario.
The organization is calling on the provincial government to develop a physician workforce strategy to ease the doctor shortage.
It recommends the province create a pool of locums — doctors who travel to northern and rural areas to provide relief – similar to the system in place for substitute teachers.
The OMA also says the province should also create more support networks, or hubs to help physicians working in remote areas.
Another key piece is training more doctors who will go on to work in northern Ontario, especially in those smaller and remote communities.
Training doctors
Dr. Sarita Verma, dean of NOSM University, said the institution, which became an independent university in April 2022, needs more financial support from the province.
"We're being funded at the rates in 2010," Verma said. "We need a 29 per cent cost of living increase, and we cannot continue to subsidize medical education on the backs of our clinical faculty."
NOSM has campuses in Sudbury and Thunder Bay. It was founded in 2002, and before last year, it was attached to both Laurentian University and Lakehead University.
As of June 2023, NOSM has graduated 902 medical doctors. More than half of them have continued to practise in northern Ontario.
According to NOSM, communities across northern Ontario are actively recruiting more than 350 physicians, including 200 family doctors.
But the OMA says those recruitment efforts don't reflect the growing health-care needs in northern Ontario.
"The numbers that we're seeing in terms of our need for family physicians and our need for specialists has in fact increased," said Dr. Sarah Newbery, NOSM's assistant dean of physician workforce strategy.
Newbery said northern Ontario has a "significant burden of chronic illness" along with higher rates of opioid-related deaths than other parts of the province.
8,000 new doctors since 2018
In an email to CBC News, Hannah Jensen, a spokesperson for Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones, said the province has added 8,000 new physicians since 2018.
Jensen said the province recently added an additional 14 undergraduate and 22 postgraduate seats to NOSM, as part of the largest medical school expansion in 15 years.
"And we are supporting over 80 physicians through the Northern and Rural Recruitment and Retention Initiative (NRRRI), which provides grants to physicians who open a practice in rural or northern Ontario," Jensen wrote.
With files from Kate Rutherford