Primary Care

Beyond burnout: Why a thriving medical profession is essential for patient care

If we are serious about fixing health care in Canada, physician wellness can’t be an afterthought. It must be part of the cure.

Shamed to death: How stigma, not science, is killing Canadians with lung cancer

Lung cancer screening should be available to everyone at risk, regardless of where they live or the source of their illness. 

From bombed refineries to empty fridges: A faraway war raises health concerns at home

When the Middle East burns, Canadians feel the heat in our gas tanks, grocery bills, clinic waitlists and therapy rooms. Global crises may not stay global; they can become local.

From burden to blueprint: Clinicians and patients as co-architects of primary care’s digital future 

Clinicians and patients are not simply users to be consulted. They are indispensable partners – co-architects of a digital transformation that serves care, not the other way around.

Who owns the results?

When it comes to diagnostic test results, patient access to information has expanded rapidly. Responsibility for interpreting and acting on that information has not expanded in the same way.

Beyond stereotypes: Family doctors’ pivotal role in detecting substance use disorders

Primary care clinics can be the best place for detection because of the stigma patients feel when walking into a specialized clinic.

Flawed by design: The case of the Saskatchewan fertility treatment tax credit

Saskatchewan’s fertility treatment tax credit is fundamentally inequitable, exclusionary and revealing of whose access to care is prioritized – and whose is not.

Canada’s health-care systems are practicing disaster medicine every day

Across Canada, clinicians are increasingly working in environments where the demand for care far exceeds the resources available.

Alberta can’t rely on immigrant workers while denying them health care

Alberta cannot build a functioning health system by recruiting newcomers to sustain it while denying some of them the care and education that allow them to live, work and stay.

Digital tools promise better care. Are they delivering on the Quintuple Aim?

If primary care is increasingly digital, are these tools helping us move toward better patient experience, health outcomes, lower costs, improved clinician well-being and greater equity?

When digital tools reshape primary care: What happens to the 4Cs?

The question is not whether digital systems can do more. It’s whether we are designing and governing them to protect the core functions of primary care – or allowing them to add load in ways that quietly undermine care.

When technology becomes the work: Why primary care must confront the digital burden it created

Primary care in Canada is in the middle of a digital paradox. Electronic health records and digital tools were introduced to make our work easier, safer and more coordinated.

To improve primary care, ‘think globally, act locally’

Primary care is the foundation not only for individual but also for collective health, and we must mobilize more family physicians to improve it.

Are we the problem?

"Systems would visibly fail. And perhaps – like the family that finally sets the boundary – they would be forced to build what they’ve never needed to, because we were always there."

Co-payments ‘a step backward’ for refugees and the health-care system

It’s imperative we protect access to health care for refugees and asylum claimants. There is no compromise when it comes to equitable health care.

Encouraging signs but retention and recruitment essential for Ontario to achieve primary care goals

The Primary Care Act and the vision that positions primary care as the foundation of Ontario’s health system is the bold thinking our system has needed for many years. But now is the time to act on retention.

Transparency is not risk free. But neither is restricted access

Patients should not have to file formal requests to understand their own care. They should not have to wait months to read information that already exists. And they should not be excluded from conversations that shape their health and lives.

Bill to criminalize forced sterilization sparks debate over reproductive justice and medical practice

Bill S-228, which would criminalize forced and coerced sterilization with an up to 14-year prison sentence, is on its way to becoming law. But is it a step in the right direction? Experts weigh in.

The paperwork burden weighing on Canadian physicians

What’s the prescription for physician burnout? Intervention is required to simplify non-clinical workflows and alleviate the administrative burden on physicians.

Ontario’s health-care system was built for a different era but to quote our PM: ‘Nostalgia is not a strategy’

Ontario’s health-care system retains extraordinary potential. Realizing it will require abandoning outdated assumptions and committing to structural reform.