Paper Access is Not Patient Care
AI-generated image · Bay Street Wire
Opinion: The province's goal to attach millions to primary care ignores the reality of a buckling system where a name on a list does not equal a doctor in the room.
The Ontario government is currently playing a numbers game with our health. According to reporting from CBC Toronto, Health Minister Sylvia Jones recently announced that 437,000 people have been connected to primary care since the launch of a government plan early last year. The province is now setting its sights on another 600,000 people, with a broader goal of attaching all Ontarians to primary care by 2029.
On a spreadsheet, these figures look like progress. In the waiting room, the reality is far grimmer.
As a health care columnist, I have seen this pattern before: the conflation of 'access' with 'care.' Minister Jones is pushing for the expansion of 78 primary care teams—interdisciplinary groups that may include social workers, physiotherapists, nurses, and doctors. While the government claims it is on track to reach its targets, the Ontario Medical Association has provided a sobering counter-metric: 2.5 million people currently lack a family doctor.
There is a cavernous gap between the government's commitment to attach two million people and the actual number of unattached residents reported by the Ontario Medical Association. When the province celebrates attaching hundreds of thousands of people, we must ask what that 'attachment' actually looks like for the patient. Is it a meaningful relationship with a primary care provider, or is it simply the addition of a name to a registry?
Adding names to a list is a hollow victory when the existing infrastructure is already buckling. We are seeing a system where patients who have had 'access' on paper for years still find themselves without an actual doctor in practice. By focusing on the metric of 'attachment,' the government risks creating a facade of coverage that masks a deeper crisis of capacity.
If the goal is truly to ensure every Ontarian has primary care by 2029, the focus cannot remain solely on the number of people 'connected.' It must shift to the quality and availability of the care being provided. Until the gap between the government's targets and the Ontario Medical Association's reality is closed, these announcements are little more than administrative bookkeeping while patients continue to wait.