NDP dismisses government’s enthusiasm over Primary Care Action Plan
The provincial NDP is disputing claims by the Health Minister that the Primary Care Action Plan is working.
Health Minister Sylvia Jones announced on Monday that 245,000 people had been connected to a family doctor or nurse practitioner in the plan’s first year.
She says it puts the province on track to exceed its goal of 300,000 this year and have every Ontario resident gain access to a primary care provider by 2029.
NDP leader Marit Stiles doubts the province will achieve that goal.
Stiles says residents are still waiting long hours in emergency rooms, and hundreds of thousands of families have no access to a family doctor.
“The government can announce targets all it wants, but those targets don’t match the reality on the ground,” states Stiles in a statement.
“Half of Ontario’s municipalities still don’t have family doctors taking new patients. The real work is creating new primary care teams in communities that have none, and that work isn’t happening at the scale required.”
Stile adds that the government is acting as if the healthcare crisis is over.
Shadow Minister for Mental Health and Addictions with responsibility for Primary Care, Dr. Robin Lennox, feels the government is overstating progress while ignoring the scope of the problem.
“We all agree team-based care is the right model, but there is no physician recruitment or retention plan, and nurses in community care are still paid less than their hospital counterparts,” states Lennox.
“When half of family doctors are considering leaving practice in the next five years, these teams will not succeed unless the government acts now to make family medicine sustainable.
The Health Minister noted plans to tackle the waitlist with Healthcare Connect, which was set up to help people find a doctor.
Lennox says the waitlist represents only about 11% of people who need primary care, and focusing on that alone is not ambitious enough.
“Being attached on paper does not mean people can get timely appointments or access care close to home, and without that, outcomes will not improve.”
