Welcome to my first blog of 2023. A new year brings new challenges but also new potential for opportunity.
In my November comments I focused on the upcoming changes in residency training and promised to come back to the issue of our practice environment. There has been an ever-growing awareness and public outcry over the critical health workforce and systems issues facing health care in Canada. Primary care in particular has been a focus of concern, with growing numbers of Canadians having no family doctor or other source of primary care. This has been a major focus of discussion between provinces and territories and the federal government, with a first ministers’ meeting now scheduled for February 7 when these issues, and funding to address them, will be the focus of the agenda.
This opens the door to consideration of the potential opportunities in the next few years to make significant changes to our practice environments. More funding will be welcome but, as many systems leaders have noted, this is not the answer on its own. This is especially true as we will not be able to provide the sort of care and access we know Canadians deserve using our current models of care due to the major shortages we are facing in the numbers of comprehensive family physicians all across the country.
Our dean, Dr. Jane Philpott, and others just released a report on “Taking Back Health Care” that outlines some ideas for a way forward. Many of these ideas are not new — they are things we know work but they have not been widely implemented. Publicly funded teams to support the delivery of primary care, better mental-health supports, and major improvements to the interoperability of health data, especially in connecting primary care, are all included. Also, up front is an important statement about the pressing need to make access to primary care universal, even in the face of health workforce challenges.
I am hopeful that this year will represent the start of a journey to make these ideas a reality, and I hope you can also see a glimmer of hope for real change that is long overdue.
Dr. Michael Green
Department Head
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