Nurse practitioners are a key plank of government efforts to improve access to primary care. However, a continuing gap in pay and benefits for nurse practitioners who choose to work in primary care compared to those who work in hospitals, limits recruitment and retention to community settings. From a zippy online campaign to an economist-authored …
Recently there have been comments on this website and in other forums about nurse practitioners in the health care system and how we are not really an appropriate solution to primary care shortages for a whole bunch of reasons. While debate is usually healthy, the problem here is that many of the rationales given for …
Ontario’s Minister of Health is promising that people will soon have more timely access to their family physicians. The province’s 200 family health teams will come under the control of Ontario’s 14 local health integration networks (LHINs), the regional authorities that currently oversee the system. The goal is to give citizens speedier access to primary …
In the last decade, efforts to improve access to primary care in Ontario have led to major changes to how family doctors practice and are paid. A recent report suggests that these newer models of primary care are not meeting the needs of vulnerable populations, and that Community Health Centres (an older model of care) do …
My friend Ron is an energetic seventy-year-old who is diabetic. We live in northwestern Ontario, in a town called Kenora, two hundred kilometers east of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Ron’s life has just been complicated by the fact that his family doctor moved away recently. Why is this a particular complication for him? Because the lab in …
“A 41 year-old woman with no documented medical history or family history of disease presents to you complaining of occasional chest pains on exertion. How many would order a stress test to rule-out cardiovascular disease?” asks Dr. Gary Bloch, to a captivated audience of resident physicians currently in training at an academic learning day – …
I became sold on the value of primary care in a way that I wouldn’t have had I not gone through this experience with my sick child… My mindset for years: My pediatrician minimizes my concerns The few times that I had raised concerns with my childrens’ pediatrician, I had been advised that it is …
Ontario’s Minister of Health and Long Term Care, Deb Matthews, has called them “a bit of a secret in health care”. The Honorable Roy Romanow is a big supporter of them. They are Tommy Douglas’ “Second Stage of Medicare” in action. Are Community Health Centres (CHCs) the best kept secret in health care and, if …
Improving access to primary care has been a key priority of the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care for the past decade. The number of Ontarians who have a regular family doctor has increased dramatically. However, patients who are chronically ill continue to have problems accessing primary care. More family doctors and more rostered …
Increasing access to primary care providers, such as family doctors or nurse practitioners, has been a government priority. Better access to primary care is also associated with improved population health. Although the percentage of Ontarians with a regular primary care provider has increased in recent years, fewer than half can see their primary care provider …