Why is it so hard to find a family doctor in Canada? And what can be done about it?
The dramatic increase in retirements has made the shortage of home health care providers even more acute. Statistics show that 1.8 million Ontarians are now looking for a home doctor.
This number rose sharply during the pandemic, prompting hundreds of home doctors to give up their practices, and now continues to grow. The fact is that many aging doctors of the baby boomer generation have recently decided to retire. Surveys confirm that about 20% of Toronto's home doctors plan to end their practices within the next 5 years.
The disappointing statistics force us to quickly look for ways out of the current situation. But experts declare that the crisis in the field of house doctors cannot be solved in the shortest possible time. According to them, it cannot be solved only by increasing the number of places in provincial medical institutions.
Among the key recommendations from experts on how to overcome the crisis are faster access to practice for physicians educated or practicing abroad and less paperwork. According to a new report from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, Canadian doctors are spending millions of hours a year on paperwork, time they could be spending on patients.
