Canada’s largest physicians' organization, the Canadian Medical Association, is calling for action to fix the country’s ailing health care system.
The call for action came after a recent meeting of federal, provincial and territorial health ministers. On the table were issues such as access to drugs, streamlining the process for internationally trained doctors and nurses to get their licensing in Canada, and the expansion of mental health, and addiction services.
They also talked about modernizing health care data, and how to address global public health threats such as measles outbreaks.
But the Canadian Medical Association says while the meeting was a great opportunity, it failed to provide tangible action plans.
“Funding of more primary care teams. We would like to see a provincial memorandum of understanding to help with physician mobility to cross the provinces. We were hoping they would come out with that. We would like to see a streamlined pathway for immigration for our internationally medically trained doctors,” said Dr. Margot Burnell, president of the CMA.
That issue is particularly important, since across Canada there has been a chronic shortage of family physicians. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians do not have a family doctor.
“We know from models in the States and Australia they by having a multi-jurisdictional licensure pathway, you increase access by about ten to fifteen percent,” Burnell said.
She was also disappointed that nothing was done about addressing a coordinated immunization program.
“We know that vaccinations save lives, so that’s very important. We’ve seen the measles outbreak, we’ve seen loss of lives from that, so that really is a very important public health concern and would have hoped that that would have been discussed at this meeting,” Burnell added.
A recent publication about Canada’s future health workforce states the country needs 23,000 more family physicians, a 49-percent increase from the current level. The study also says Canada needs 14,000 more licensed nurses and 28,000 more registered nurses, as well as more nurse practitioners and occupational therapists.
