The OCFP is focused on bringing urgently needed changes to help family doctors in their practice right now. We are at the table and advocating to the Ontario government on behalf of family doctors.

We know these are complex issues that will take time to solve, but action is needed now. We are looking for opportunities to ease the burden our members are facing as soon as possible.

Urgent action needed:

• Too much paperwork and overwhelming administrative tasks are causing burnout.
• Every family doctor, regardless of the payment model, must have access to team supports.

We aren’t just talking about issues. The OCFP is putting solutions forward.

Through focus groups, surveys, interviews and Communities of Practice, the OCFP has listened to family doctors and created a Plan of Action, Solutions for Today: Ensuring Every Ontarian Has Access to a Family Physician. This plan has been submitted to government officials.

Our Plan of Action offers solutions that can be implemented now and others that are longer-term commitments.

Solutions in our plan include:

• Enable family physicians to take on more patients, and to see them faster, by adding primary care team members who can immediately support a broad range of patient needs.

• Enable family physicians to take on more patients, and to see them faster, by increasing the time that family physicians spend on direct patient care by improving the efficiency of clinical and administrative work.

• Ensure more Ontarians have access to family doctors by fast tracking foreign-trained doctors to practice in Ontario and increasing family medicine residency spots.

• Ensure Ontarians in the North, rural areas and others in the most under-served populations have equitable access to family physicians by improving chronic and critical physician shortages in these areas.

• Build on our current primary care models to better fit today’s population needs.

Our Plan of Action is a work in progress. We will keep updating this tool and use it to speak with government and healthcare leaders, and other policymakers.

Read our Plan of Action.

We know we have mountains to move and that family doctors aren’t feeling relief in their practices, but we are starting to see signs of recognition of the issues in government due in part to OCFP advocacy.

• As a result of OCFP advocacy efforts, The Ministry of Health and Ontario Health posted a call for Expressions of Interest for those who wish to create or expand a team.
• Recently, Prime Minister Trudeau reinforced in the Federal Health Transfer negotiations that every Canadian should have access to a family doctor.
• The recent Ontario 2023 Budget stated that “primary care and family physicians are the foundation of the health care system.” You can read the statement that we issued in response to the government’s plan for healthcare.
• A $30 million investment was committed to expanding and creating 18 new teams. Other investments in the provincial budget align with our policy recommendations.

It’s not enough.

But, it’s a first step in the right direction.

The OCFP will not stop advocating until your remuneration, relief from the untenable amounts of unpaid administrative work, and your ability to care for patients within the full scope of your training have been realized. We want our members to achieve a work-life balance that brings meaning and fulfillment to your careers as you provide the most essential medical care to all Ontarians.