Bonnie Crombie promises Ontario Liberals would find everyone a family doctor in 4 years

Ontario Liberal Party Leader Bonnie Crombie promised on Monday that if elected premier, she would ensure that every resident in the province has access to a family doctor within four years.

"We're going to bring a wartime effort to fixing this crisis, and we're going to pull every lever possible to track our progress each and every single day and we're going to ensure that every single person in Ontario has access to a family doctor," Crombie told reporters at a news conference in Brampton.

"We have a plan to ensure that we can make that commitment a reality within four years. And if I fail, don't re-elect me. This is my number one priority."

In July, the Ontario College of Family Physicians said 2.5 million people in Ontario don't have a family doctor.

Crombie said the Liberals would open two new medical schools and expand existing ones, recruit hundreds of qualified family doctors working in other fields to return to family medicine, and structure new clinics under a team-based model that will give people access to care on evenings and weekends. 

She said the Liberals would also recruit more doctors to rural areas where they are badly needed, streamline and digitize administrative tasks, including by getting rid of fax machines, and incentivize the nearly 2,400 family doctors nearing retirement to extend their careers.

The Liberal primary care plan would cost $3.1 billion, an amount that Crombie said is roughly equivalent to the sum total of the $200 rebates that Ontario Premier Doug Ford has promised to give residents.

She added that Ford has had six years to fix the problems in health care in the province and hasn't done it.

"When we look at the spending of this government, the money isn't going to fund our health-care system or our education system," she said.

"The money exists and we will put it to good use to ensure that every Ontarian has access to a family doctor."

'Government has taken action,' health ministry says

Hannah Jensen, spokesperson for Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones, said in an email on Monday that the provincial government has been working hard on the issue.

"While the Liberals were in power, they slashed 50 medical residency seats, cutting hundreds of doctors, and spent their years in opposition voting against the steps our government has taken to add 15,000 more physicians, and more nurse practitioners than every single other province combined," Jensen said.

"On the other hand, our government has taken action, leading the country with nearly 90 per cent of people having a primary care provider. We're taking a step further to invest half a billion dollars to connect 600,000 more people to primary care and ensuring everyone who needs care has access to a provider."

Jensen said the government is already expanding the medical school system, "breaking down barriers for hundreds of internationally educated physicians through programs like Practice Ready Ontario, making historic investments to expand interprofessional primary care teams, connecting 330,000 more people to primary care, and expanding the Learn and Stay Grant to connect 1.36 million more people to primary care."

Dr. Dominik Nowak, president of the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) said on Monday that close to one in four people in Ontario do not have access to a family doctor. He said changes are needed now, not in four years. He added the OMA has been asking for these changes for years.

"We have a health care system that is in crisis, more than crisis. It's in a catastrophe now. Almost one in four people can't find a family doctor," Nowak said.

He said what would help most are rapidly expanding teams, cutting down on unnecessary paperwork and increasing funding so that family practices and primary care are sustainable. 

"The reality is one of the reasons why people are retiring or scaling back is that we're asking so much of family doctors right now. We're saying, sign up, have a practice of a few 1,000 people, and by the way, people are going to ask you if you could do some more every single day."

The OMA, which represents more than 43,000 doctors, medical students and retired physicians, advocates for and supporting doctors.