Toronto medical practice warns of 'critical staffing shortage,' says 2,000 patients could soon be without a doctor at its facility alone

A woman is examined by a doctor in this file image.

Doctors and patients at a Toronto-based family health team are sounding an alarm over what they’re calling a “critical staffing shortage” when it comes to family health practitioners in Ontario.

“We are feeling overwhelmed and exhausted,” Dr. Elysha Mawji told reporters at a news conference Monday.

Mawji, her colleagues and patients from the Taddle Creek Family Health Team held a news conference with NDP MPPs at Queen’s Park to voice their concerns.

Taddle Creek, based in downtown Toronto, says one of its doctors will soon retire and finding a replacement has proven challenging. Together with the loss of another doctor from the team last year, some 2,000 patients will soon be without a family physician, the group says.

A large part of the shortage, the group says, has to do with underfunding of family medicine.

“Newly trained doctors are intentionally choosing not to enter family medicine at the same time existing family doctors are leaving,” Mawji said. “This is due to lack of support and funding. We are facing increases in administrative burden, complexity of care and costs required to run our practices.”

Nickel Belt MPP France Gélinas said family health teams are struggling because there’s not enough money to attract and retain doctors in family medicine.

“When you cannot recruit your team members because they haven’t seen a pay increase in more than five years, then this team falls apart,” she said. “The quality of care and the number of patients you can look after goes down.”

The problem is being acutely felt in Toronto, University-Rosedale MPP Jessica Bell said.

“Many people know that being left without a family doctor or a primary care provider is stressful, anxiety-inducing, and in some cases, dangerous,” Bell said.

She said that people without family doctors will often put off important screenings that could catch serious health problems, such as various cancers.

Patients will be left to use walk-ins

William Wololrich is one of the patients from the health team who will soon be without a family doctor. He says the impending loss will have a “profound” impact on he and his wife, who are both patients of hers.

Wololrich, who has an auto-immune condition, says his doctor has for years coordinated his complex health-care needs with specialists.

He recalled one incident where he needed urgent care and the problem might have gone undetected for days without her.

“Because my family doctor was always copied on my blood work, she became aware that I was seriously ill, and called that that evening to tell me that I needed to go to my kidney doctor immediately, or failing that to the emergency room,” Woolrich said.

He said her departure will leave many people without crucial care and called it a “tragedy” that despite her best efforts she’s been unable to find another doctor to take over her patients.

“If a suitable replacement isn’t found, we too will have to use walk-in clinics and see doctors who are unfamiliar with our history and complex needs,” he said.

Doctors overworked, underfunded

Doctors in family medicine say they’re overwhelmed not just by the number of people seeking care, but by the amount of additional work associated with caring for patients, which they say is not factored in. That work can include note-taking, follow-up, and back-and-forth requests for more information around referrals.

Cheryl Dobinson, the executive director at Taddle Creek, said the pressure on family health practices stems from a “widening wage gap” between community health workers and health-care workers in other sectors.

“Our staff at Tattle Creek family health team have seen no increases in their salary for five years now, while cost of living has gone up year after year,” Dobinson said. “As a result, over a third of our community health staff have left in the past year.”

She said the highest turnover has been in social work and administrative staff who say they’re leaving because they need higher paying positions elsewhere to support themselves and their families.

Gélinas said the experience patients are sharing is not just happening in Toronto, it “is being repeated everywhere.”

She and Bell are calling for better funding of family health teams to help ensure that people have access to primary care physicians.

Province says it is working to connect more people

In a statement, a spokesperson for Health Minister Sylvia Jones said the Ford government has added 15,000 new physicians to the workforce since 2018, including a 10 per cent increase in family doctors.

“While Ontario is leading the country with nearly 90% of Ontarians having a primary care provider, we continue to build on our progress to ensure everyone who wants a primary care provider has access to one,” Jones' director of communications, Hannah Jensen, said.

She said the province is working to break down barriers for internationally-trained doctors and is investing in interprofessional primary care teams in order to try connect 1.36 million more people with primary care.

The Ford government recently appointed former federal health minister Jane Philpott as chair of a new “Primary Care Action Team” with the goal of making sure that every Ontarian is connected with a primary care physician within five years.

In making the appointment, the government also noted that it is opening two new medical schools and will devote approximately 70 per cent of the new postgraduate training seats at the new York University School of Medicine to primary care medicine once the school opens in 2028.