Alberta’s health system is broken.
The number of people trying to access family doctors has increased, but the number of physicians accepting new patients has hit new lows.
The result is hundreds of thousands of people without a family doctor, without a lifeline to primary care.
The Find a Doctor website, managed by the province’s Primary Care Networks, is meant to help people find family doctors accepting new patients in their area.
In reality, Find a Doctor leaves people feeling helpless and frustrated.
In 2020, there were almost 900 family doctors registered with the website. As of September this year, that number of doctors on the website dropped by nearly 80 percent to just under 200!
According to the Find a Doctor 2022-2023 report, the website saw over 923,000 visits, marking around a 30 percent increase compared to last year. The number of clinic connections also increased by more than two-fifths from the year before to 70,000.
Clinic connections are the number of times users click a clinic contact link to connect with a family doctor. But this number doesn’t reflect how many users actually get a new physician. Like opening a pretty box to find it empty, the Find a Doctor website has left many feeling disappointed.
More People, Fewer Family Doctors
Alberta saw the highest population growth rate of all provinces and territories from 2022 to 2023. In a year, our population grew by almost 185,000.
The number of physicians registered with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta (CPSA) also increased by more than 460 since 2020.
Yet, many of these family physicians choose not to pursue traditional family medicine.
A study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that less than half of University of Alberta family medicine graduates plan to accept new patients in their first five years of practice.
Instead, these graduates choose to stand in for existing doctors at hospitals or work in a focused area of practice like maternity care.
Mountains of paperwork, being responsible for their patients around the clock, and the cost of running a business are a few reasons why graduates aren’t lining up to become family doctors.
Great Training, Terrible System
Our province is home to one of the best family medicine training programs in the country. But we can’t force medical school students into primary care. They need to make that decision for themselves. However, we can make the field more appealing to students.
Compared to other medical specialties, family medicine tends to pay less. For medical students with a mountain of student loan debts, making less money makes little sense when other kinds of medicine pay more.
And, unlike doctors filling in at other clinics or hospitals, family doctors also have to pay the costs of setting up and running a business, such as staff, rent, and utilities.
Lower Pay, Higher Costs… Not an Appealing Equation.
Family doctors went to school for medicine, not business.
Learning how to run a business was not part of their studies, yet they are expected to manage a successful business. In Canada, the average annual pay for a family doctor is around $260,000.
That may sound like a lot, but almost 40 percent of a family doctor’s pay goes towards overhead costs, leaving them with just under $168,000.
Why become a family doctor when a pediatrician earns more without the worry of overhead costs?
“Family medicine practices and clinics are dying, and we must address those needs now,” wrote Alberta Medical Association president Dr. Fredrykka Rinaldi in a letter to the Association’s members.
In addition to fewer medical students choosing careers as family doctors, existing family doctors are closing their practices. Some family doctors are leaving the province entirely. Many older doctors are retiring, and family doctors from other provinces don’t see Alberta as a desirable place to live and work.
From burnout to a lack of pay, there are too many reasons to leave and not enough reasons to stay.
The UCP government promised to fix the health system, but it remains broken. Primary care is the backbone of a strong health system. We rely on family doctors not just to diagnose but to practice preventative medicine.
Without access to family physicians, people are at greater risk of diseases like cancer going undiagnosed and untreated.
A full-time family physician in a private practice cares for over 1,500 patients. For every family doctor that leaves the province, that’s 1,500 people without a family doctor.
We need our government to fix our provincial health system. That starts by giving our family doctors a reason to stay. Otherwise, hundreds of thousands of people will remain without primary care.
Whether it’s a pay bump or cutting down on costs associated with running a private practice, Premier Smith’s government needs to do something.
They announced they will be spending $57 million over the next three years (or about $19 million per year) to help family doctors and nurse practitioners care for more patients. That will provide family doctors and caregivers up to $10,000 annually.
But that’s a drop in the ocean. It will do very little to fix our broken health system.
We can’t help but think that the Smith government’s priorities are misguided.
Alberta is forecast to have a $2.4 billion surplus for 2023-2024. Yet, the government has budgeted more than $22 million on frivolous expenditures like its War Room propaganda while many Albertans struggle to find accessible health care.
Is Danielle Smith’s pet propaganda project worth $3 million more this year than funding more family Doctors?
What do you think?
Alberta’s health care system is sick and needs to get a doctor’s diagnosis… but we simply can’t find one anywhere!
