Confronting the Crisis: A New Advocacy Direction for Family Medicine

Dear colleagues,

I have heard from many of you recently about the ongoing pressures and challenges you face in your practice of family medicine in Ontario. Our members are experiencing burnout, inflationary cost pressures, overwork, lack of system support and many systemic challenges that are making the practice of comprehensive family medicine seem near impossible a lot of the time. One of our colleagues shared recently that her young daughter would never want to be a doctor because “there’s just too much homework every day”.

I wanted to share with you a Media Release that we distributed to Ontario media yesterday, titled “As the crisis in family medicine gets worse, government continues to show doctors it doesn’t care.”

In the release, we identify the crisis in family medicine and call on the government to realize the seriousness of the situation and act accordingly. While this is just a start and certainly won’t solve all of our problems, it provides a view into the way that we intend to advocate more forcefully on our members’ behalf going forward. So how did we get here? To be frank, I don’t think we at the OMA have done a great job representing and advocating for family doctors in Ontario. If we had been, then we would not be in our current situation. In my opinion, the reasons for this are twofold.

First, the structure of the OMA in the past has focused too much on specialists and not enough on family doctors. Family doctors represent at least 40% of the OMA members. We are not getting good value for our money. There have been significant changes at the OMA, and I think family medicine will benefit from this. Our new CEO, Kim Moran, as past CEO of OCFP understands the challenges in family medicine deeply. We also have a family doctor as chair of the OMA board in Cathy Faulds.

Secondly, as for the SGFP’s role, again I don’t think we have effectively advocated for our members. In part this stems from the structure of the SGFP, which was essentially a board of 20. We were known within the OMA as the group who couldn’t make decisions. Two months ago, the SGFP board of 20 voted to reduce its size to 7. We have a new structure, a new executive director and a solid strategic plan. As for the year three payment increase, this is an insult - like being kicked when we are down. I agree with many of you that we should not have gambled with an increase. In retrospect, this was a poor decision. We will fight to get as close to 1.2% as possible.

The forthcoming PSA is critical to the survival of family medicine in Ontario, and the SGFP has submitted a solid proposal to the negotiations team. Additionally, we can make changes outside the PSA. If it wishes, the Government of Ontario can flow money to family medicine for support outside of the PSA. So there will be a lot of work to do in between agreements. I want to close by saying I have heard concerns from so many of you, and I wholeheartedly agree. We are working hard at SGFP to make 2024 the year that the voices of our members are clearly and forcefully represented.

I am hopeful that together we can make a difference.

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Sincerely,

Dr. Dave Barber Chair, SGFP