Highlights from Our 2026 SGFP Member Engagement

Dear SGFP Members,

Last week, the SGFP Executive and Chief Physician Officers participated in our third annual in-person member engagement. This initiative has become a critical part of how we connect with members, understand the realities of practice across the province, and strengthen our work on your behalf.

We want to thank each of the communities we visited and all of the members who took the time to meet with us and share their stories, challenges, and successes. Your insights continue to shape SGFP's work and ensure it reflects the lived experience of family physicians.

Thank you to our colleagues in Palmerston, Drayton, Goderich, Hanover, Wingham, Listowel, Wiarton, Owen Sound, Mitchell, and Guelph for welcoming us warmly into your communities. (Check out our LinkedIn page for some pictures from the meetings.)

Across every community we visited, one thing was unmistakable: family physicians are holding the care in these communities together. In many places, you are it. What we heard wasn't abstract policy feedback, it was people describing how much harder this work has become, and how much of that difficulty is invisible to the systems around them.

A few themes emerged:

• Family physicians, particularly rural generalists, are filling gaps the system does not see, supporting aspects of care like local cancer care delivery and obstetrical care, often without recognition or support, and it is becoming harder to sustain.
• Family physicians are often left out of care decision-making that directly affects their practice, for example, when a hospital or system chooses an electronic system based on administrative convenience rather than one that would improve physician workflows and integrate with local care pathways. Those decisions carry consequences that land squarely on family doctors, with little say in how they're made.
• FHO+ has been disruptive, especially for rural generalists in non-urban areas, resulting in lower income from family practice office work due to changes in how they're remunerated, and forcing hard decisions about how care is delivered. 
• Administrative burden persists and for some, it continues to increase (examples cited like the regression to fax for FIT tests and the discontinuation of PrescribeIT). Support and relief, like central referral, are not coming fast enough.
• Locum coverage is competitive and/or sparse across communities, and finding it takes real work just to be able to take time away. Communities as little as 20 minutes apart can end up "outbidding" one another for locum coverage, sometimes with financial support from other local entities, leaving smaller or less-resourced communities at a disadvantage.
• Resources, such as team-based care, to support family physicians in clinic are not distributed evenly across the province.
• Recruitment to smaller and rural communities remains a challenge, and communities that are already disadvantaged risk becoming more so, as fewer resources and supports make them less attractive to prospective physicians.
• Training pathways for rural generalist practice remain limited, leaving individual communities to shoulder the work of attracting students and residents to choose rural practice, work that should be supported at a system level, not left to already-stretched communities.

We asked the physicians we met why they keep doing this work under these conditions. The answer, again and again, was simple: because it's the right thing to do.

It's a lovely answer. It's also a warning. A system that relies on the goodwill of family physicians to hold itself together is not a sustainable one, and the cost of that reliance will come due.

Looking Ahead

Thank you again to everyone who met with us and shared their experiences. Conversations like these are only possible because of the ongoing support of members like you.

Much of what SGFP does beyond our core OMA funding, including this annual engagement, SGFP On-Call, and the Chair's Letters, is made possible by voluntary member dues. At $310 annually, about $0.85 per day, your contribution helps us keep showing up for you and your patients. [Contribute here.]

We wish we could visit everyone. If you'd like to meet with us to discuss your challenges then sign up for a virtual 1:1 SGFP On-Call session with one of our leaders here.

We plan to continue this tour next year, and this spring we'll ask you to help us decide where to go next. Stay tuned.

Warm Regards,

Dr. Dave Barber, Chair, SGFP

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