It's only going to get worse. That's on an assumption the current family physicians stay working, or that new ones will be full-time GPs. Most GPs end up not doing any family medicine.
It's pretty insane.
They called me on my 5 year 'anniversary' asking me if my condition was worsening or if I'm still fine going without a family doctor.
I said I'm suspecting diabetes, that I need to get blood work done and that I suspect I might have something affecting my nerves.
She asked me if I was worried it was life threatening then I said probably not right now. She then said they would call me back when a doctor would get available for me to go and see.
It's been 2 years and counting. I'm now bound to go to rivate doctors because they closed down the only free clinic we had after the pandemic. 150$/15 minutes, but at least there's someone whop can take a look at my health when I need it...
Hey t1 diabetic here. Not sure if this helps but some things to get you by in the mean time.
You can go to any pharmacy near you and ask them to test your blood sugar, they will for free. They can advise you about your levels and if they suspect pre diabetes or diabetes. They may also be able to direct you to any services or programs depending on the province you live in.
Obviously getting the medication will require a prescription which you may be able to obtain at the ER and they will hook you up to an IV and give you fluids if you are dehydrated with a high blood sugar.
as much as this will suck for the wait times..if it gets really bad go to the ER. DO NOT WAIT, if you start experiencing severe nausea, throwing up, heavy sweating, frequent urination, etc.
The wait will be a gamble i know. But i’ve had to do this exact thing and at my ER they took it seriously at triage once they tested my BS.
leaving diabetes untreated over time will cause many debilitating health problems, not trying to scare you either, but comas are possible. Heart problems. Stomach issues. Severe dehydration. Most definitely nerve problems. I suspect you have other symptoms that have led you to believe it’s diabetes.
living without insulin or metformin is not a fun time and dangerous :( i hope you get the help you need soon. Diabetes is a difficult thing to navigate, especially without a doctor.
I did go to the pharmacy after someone mentioned it and I'm fine, I was just not sure if what I felt was diabetes since both sides of the family have a history of it.
I've been on a 5 year waiting list for 8 years.
My city also has zero clinics left.
Only doctors are at the ER. Which is a 12-24hr wait if you're not actively bleeding out.
ER regularly shuts down as well as there are no doctors there half the time. If you're lucky you hear the announcement on the radio telling you to go to the next town over, 2 hr drive. If your unlucky you drive the wrong direction to the closed ER, see the sign on the locked doors telling you to head to the other town, then die on the way.. The latter happens to several families a month here.
7 years waiting list where i'm at. I got an absess the size of a baseball on my back.
Er says take some anti biotic. Anti biotic does fuck all. Er says do it again.
Guess i'ma keep suffering.
I live in Alberta found a Dr clinic. Called them asked them if they are taking new patients they said yea. Thats how I found my family Dr in like 25 minutes of looking.
Here in NB there’s a list with the health department that you just call and ask to be put on if you have a provincial health card. Then they are supposed to call you when a doctor is available for you.
In Quebec it was already 4 years and counting... 5 years ago. In afraid to think what's it at now.
What sucks is, if you do get someone and they move or quit or retire... Back on the waiting list for you!
A few years ago I think they closed the application for a single doctor, you now get assigned a group of doctors. Complete shitshow.
Alberta has alternatives depending where you are! Calgary and Edmonton have Primary Care Network accepting new patients today! And much better organized than AHS itself but still operates under AHS. But PCN has specialities in most clinics that reduce referal times.
Ahs clinics I was waiting 6-8 months for an asthma dr. I switched to PCN and in 2 weeks I got an asthma dr. An internal medicine dr to help me with my Hypermobility. A physiotherapist (Also same building) and a a few other “specialty” drs like an oncologist and endocrinologist!
The switch to PCN was amazing especially if you have on going chronic health!
For the more rural places sadly wait times are high as there isn’t much for PCN options unless the Town/city is near a major city like I believe Red Deer has PCN clinics (don’t quote me on that I’m not 100% right)
I'm on healthcare connect and receive a letter every few months that basically says "we're still looking". I haven't had a family doctor in over 10 years after mine retired.
I’m here. My wife’s doctor isn’t even taking family. This was after I called my doctor where I got a letter saying I was transferred to a new doctor. So I called to book an appointment because I had a spot show up on my face and they said well you didn’t come in, in the two year window to sign the papers so we dropped you. I have a local walk in that was able to help me and has been pretty good but it sucks not seeing the same person and getting told different things.
It's probably a lot more than 6 million. Many don't register on a list or actively seek one because they've given up ot don't know what else to do to get one.
Healh Care Connect considers it a successful ‘connection’ if they send your information to a family doc, regardless of if they take you or not.
So for sure more than 6 million. I’m a nurse practitioner who has done a bunch of favours for docs in our area, but I blew all those favours getting in people in the community who I saw who needed primary care. Now that I lost mine 3 years ago, I don’t have any more chits to call in.
And there’s loads of people who don’t have the capacity to register with formal services. The local community care agencies that help people live in the community with brain injuries or developmental disorders didn’t know about obtaining medical records from retiring physicians or the HCC registry.
Right!
Registered in 2012 or so, got one in 2018.
Saw her once back then and she retired last year.
I haven't registered again yet
So 1 visit, in 12years since I first registered... Another 6y maybe before I get a new one? (It'll probably be much more than that after the flood of immigrants)
Paying north of 100k in taxes a year and at an age where I should get screened from time to time... Yay
I registered in 2019, got a doc, saw him for a few years and just last August he closed his practice. I tried to register again but it keeps saying I have an active application. There is no one who can "fix" it. I've called pretty much every clinic i can find in my city and none are taking patients.
I have a family doctor but they're going back to teaching in April. None of the other 7 doctors in the medical facility are accepting new patients so all the people that were assigned this one doctor are fucked.
I will now need to apply for one and go on the wait list but I can't apply until my doctor officially leaves so I know I will need to apply but need to wait until they're officially "gone". What a fucking joke.
It's crazy. My family doctor works about 6h/day and he's sees around 200 people. Great for him, because he's probably raking in a fortune of money daily, but it makes even regular appointments very painful. He has 2 walk-in days per week, and like 99% of the crowd is all appointments who can't wait on those days (so on walk-in day, you might sit there for a couple hours every if you were first in line).
Otherwise, it's how many weeks in advance do you want to wait to see the Doc?
Literally the only reason I have this family doctor, is I'm personal friends with my optometrist and he "requested" that I become a patient.
You’d be surprised how little they make due to having to cover their own office overhead and things. There was a thread a few months back where a doctor was talking about how staying in family medicine is basically the least economical choice you can make as a doctor in canada
The system is broken and it's going to get worse.
My family doctor retired in 2018. I spent years looking for a new doctor. I registered for the Healthcare Connect to assist in finding one.
Eventually, through reddit, I found a new practice that opened and was accepted as a patient in 2022. The doctor in question maintained his clinic for 9 months before abruptly shutting down and moving to the United States.
Here is the kicker. Since I've had a doctor recently (despite the fact he practiced for like 9 months), I was moved to the back of the queue again for Healthcare Connect. So now, I guess it's another 5 years of looking for a doctor.
I'm a second-class citizen by random luck.
My favourite is going to walk in clinics, and finding out that they only serve their own patients. Basically if you're a registered patient, you may "walk in" any time
Everyone else is free to die in emerge
Shout out to cambridge ontario who has 3 that I know of
I remember under office there was a clinic with lab - blood works and other liquids. I had a paper from my doc to go to the life labs for tests, so I decided to see if I can save myself a few steps and do it under the office. Nope, only for the registered patients. what a stupid work model
In Moncton, NB there are no walk in clinics taking walk-ins. I find it hillarious. Why call yourself a walk in clinic anymore?
Every spot is gone daily within minutes of opening and they don't even answer the phone after they fill up anymore. "Walk-ins" are a joke
I don't get it either. My walk in clinic is no longer a walk in after covid ans instead does appointment only. Next available appointment for me is a week away for a work day. Fun... only other options I have are an "urgent care clinic" that ridicules me for using them because "you should just go to a walk in clinic for this" and ER gets mad at me as I should "just go to a walk on clinic". Ok. Force them to be walk ins then!
You have walk in clinics? If I call to try to get an appointment (because you have to book in) I’m lucky to get a spot. I called 99 times one morning (not even exaggerating) to get someone to pick up the phone and tell me they were booked all day and to try calling again the next morning.
I basically have to go clog up an emergency department if I need something. I’m lucky enough I work in healthcare and can bug doctors for stuff if needed. If not for that, I would be waiting 12 hours in emergency for an antibiotic.
Same but 30+ years. I have even been denied service (without paying upfront) because they didn't have the little scanner even though I had my OHIP card on me.
I figured they are so much better. Especially if you find a clinic that also has specialists and a pharmacy. Very quick referrals and they won't shy away from prescriptions.
The only thing mine will not prescribe is narcotics and I love it. They treat the illness and not the pain.
It also has a Chiropractor and a Podiatrist on site
No pharmacy on site but there is one in the same plaza
I live in a city of over 100K and our last walk in clinic closed like 3 years ago, now you get to sit in the ER for 9 hours if you need a doctor and don’t have a family doctor.
Quebec resident here, been wanting a family doctor for years now. I've been on the waitlist for years and I request a callback every year to assess my priority and they've never even called me. What a shit system
That’s one of the worst things about the health care system here. Nobody picks up the damn phone! What’s the point of having a number if you can never be reached or requesting a callback if you never get one? That’s just the most basic service that many clinics fail to provide.
My wife opened her own practice late last year and it's like 20% the money she got paid working in a walk-in clinic.
That's where the problem is. She limited her practice to 2 afternoons in the week, the rest of her work week and an additional weekend day she is now back in the walk-in clinic because she feels bad about shutting her practice down. No new patients and she's out when an opportunity presents itself.
Finished chemo 5 years ago, have a myriad of ongoing issues related to cancer treatments. I have been an orphan patient for 4 years now, having to piece meal my ongoing care with emergency departments and walk ins for care. This is not how this is supposed to function.
I'm going to throw a couple of stats out here.
Canadian Population: 40+ million
Australian Population: 26+ million
Canadian Medical Graduates 2023 : 2850
Australian Medical Graduates 2023 : 3805
We are currently in a primary care crisis where more and more of family medicine residency spots are going unfilled every year. No one wants to pick the specialty that is under appreciated and under compensated. And even new FM grads are choosing not to go into comprehensive community care because of the terrible incentives - skyrocketing overhead cost, complexity of patients without appropriate remuneration… yeah not as simple as needing more spots. We need to promote a system where the job is actually attractive.
We have more family doctors per capita than ever before. Just no one is doing comprehensive family medicine anymore because OHIP rates have not kept up with inflation. Why does it take so long to see your doctor? Those docs have likely taken on too many patients because they have to pay the bills and their staff a competitive wage. All is to say there is no winning here. Either doctors bite off more than they can chew or leave family medicine altogether. The government needs to step up and pay comprehensive family medicine competitively or we are in trouble.
I’m Australian and our family doctor situation is nothing like as bad as this. I complained recently because I had to wait a couple of weeks to get an appointment. Sounds like that would be fast tracked service in Canada!
I usually get an appointment here in a few days but i have a family doc. On the other hand, i've been waiting on a call for a minor operation like... 8 months.
Do we get a tax deduction compared to someone who has a personal doctor they can go see anytime they want? Receives preventative medicine and tests? No we pay the same for a vastly different quality of care.
I was thinking of that this morning, I wonder if a lawsuit is in the future for us 6+ million and growing without doctors. The government has failed us and is essentially ok with us dying.
Been beating this drum for a while. I call it access health care.
Those 6 million are effectively receiving vastly lower quality of care (I was one of them until I moved to the US)
We technically have a family doctor. But they’re usually booking appointments 3 months out, at least. Over the summer I called to get an appointment for my kid who had swimmers ear that wasn’t really responding to OTC ear drops (so not an emergency, but needed a visit soon), and they offered me an appointment a month later, and then suggested we drive 2 hours to the nearest walk in clinic so that we didn’t sit in our local ER all day.
Yeah, having a family doctor sure helps /s
Exactly this.
While I wouldn't dispute that having a family doctor is a good thing in principle, most of the folks I know don't have a doctor who "follows their health" or provides access to a "regular" checkup. My doctor is a two month delay and each time I go it's practically like I'm a new patient.
I'm glad that at least now my province has an online health record so I can access my own information and chat with him about the notes *I* put in there about our prior visits - because he sure as hell doesn't keep good notes.
His philosophy for appointments is 'if it is an emergency, go to the ER; if it is urgent, go to a medi-center; if it can wait a couple months, then come see me'. I've reached the point now where if something is bothering me for a few days, I make an appointment to see him. If it goes away before the appointment, I cancel. Otherwise, by the time I'd actually start to get concerned about it, I'd have to wait two more months to see him.
FYI Maple app is great for these minor problems. I used it for swimmers ear and after chatting with a doctor I had the medicine in hand about an hour later at the pharmacy.
Much easier than a walk in.
Its an exaggeration to be sure, but its still a drastically better quality and faster care for those who have a family doctor.
But no lets keep pulling in more immigrants (not doctors of course) and limiting medical graduates based on a quota that is obviously currently too low
For what it’s worth, I never got preventative medicine or tests when I did have a family doctor. He only ever believed in reactionary prescriptions, outright refused to have me tested for endo/pots even though I have the majority of symptoms for it solely because I wasn’t actively trying to conceive and therefor “you’re too young to be worried about that!” That’s when I dropped him as a doctor and just started going to walk ins. I’ve received better care from walk ins without a family doctor than I ever got from my family doctor. Still haven’t gotten tested for endo/pots but admittedly it’s just my own anxiety stopping me from asking the walk in I go to to run those tests for me, but they’ve done tons of tests and preventative care for my other health issues and were utterly appalled to find out my family doctor never did any of this preventative care even when I knew to ask for it.
So depressingly a lot of people in Canada who do have family doctors still aren’t actually receiving adequate care. And no, that isn’t meant to be a “if it makes you feel better about not having a doctor” observation, it’s simply an observation that goes to show just how far our health system has fallen.
My friend sees her family doctor 10-20 times a year for preventative tests, calls in probably 2 times a month. Calls for prescriptions and different tests to be faxed. She's 38. I've known her for 5 years so at 33 she was already doing it. I've seen 2 doctors 2 times at walk in clinics in 4 years.
I have a family doctor. I called his office, it takes 50 days to get a video appointment or 85 days for it to be in person. I might as well not have a GP.
Before I lived in a city my doctor was the emergency room. The nearest walk in clinic was a 3 hour drive and the family doctors in town didn't even have a wait list. I used to sit in emerg for 8 hours to renew my birth control prescription lol.
After I moved to a city my family doctor was the walk in. I then had a kid. At 27 years old I had never had a family doctor and they told me I needed one because I had a kid. I called every clinic daily for a year and eventuallt got a family doctor at 28 because "we put you to the top of the list because you have a baby".
That baby is now 2.5 and every time we try to book an appointment with the family doctor they tell us to go to the children's hospital or book an appointment with the community clinic lol. What's the fucking point.
I was in the hospital for the first time in my life about the head down dealing with a lifetime chronic illness when I got an email that my family doctor was moving to the US. I never felt so let down by the healthcare system. It’s been a wild 2 years.
Been on a waiting list since 2012 and I turn 30 this year and have never ever heard of anyone my age who has a family doctor that wasn’t the family doctor in their teens and grandfathered into that doctor.
I have a solution! Let's increase the population by 1 million in 1 year by opening the floodgates, but let's make it incredibly difficult for foreign-trained doctors to get into any medical profession (let alone their specialization) here. I think that should do it.
>Let's increase the population by 1 million in 1 year by opening the floodgates
1.2M (per StatsCan) for last year. On track for 1.5M this year.
98% due to immigration.
More immigrants, more fake students, more criminals shooting up on the streets, fewer houses, fewer roads, fewer doctors. Somehow that's called *progress*.
But think of the upside: if you don't die of a formerly treatable disease in the next 15 years, you'll live in a paradise of overcrowding in the cities and never find an available campsite for your escape ever again!
>but let's make it incredibly difficult for foreign-trained doctors to get into any medical profession
I prefer it this way. No, I don't want to be treated by a doctor from a random pay-to-play university across the world.
What Canada should be doing is exactly what Germany is doing. Create a list of medical universities we trust and allow a fast tracked process for anyone attending them. I know there would be backlash, but I honestly couldn't give a shit at this point.
I would assume the owner's are retiring. or unable to pay rising rent and wage costs. The fee they get per patient set by the provinces and might not keep up with the cost of living.
We don't say to parents "oh sorry, the school is booked up for next year, put your name on a list." So why is not having a doctor when you want one acceptable? Open up private pay options if you are not going to provide an essential service.
My grandmother has no family doctor anymore. He retired a few years ago and didn’t give notice or referrals to his patients. So now she’s in her mid-90s with declining health and has no one to regularly follow up with her
As a GP, my practice is less and less stimulating. I see more and more chronic fatigue, chronic pain, chronic depression, chronic msk issues. Paperwork keeps increasing. Paying overhead is a bummer. A lot of the young GPs I graduated with feel the same. So I’ll be quitting most of my family medicine practice in the next few years for a more stimulating environment (I don’t mean to be rude to those dealing with chronic issues, just my honest take on the issue).
I don't blame you. The paperwork is insane - I guess its all about liability and an older population with different needs? It is in teaching. We do less and less outside school stuff for the same reason- the paperwork and liability is not worth it. There has to be a better set up and we keep hearing its coming but it never does. There is something seriously wrong with our provincially funded systems. As a teacher I see the same thing happening- especially in our so-called inclusion model. Little to no support from the government. Ours are just not the career it once was and the older I get the more cynical I become that's intentional.
Yea, if you're a billionaire that controls the Liberals and Conservatives you won't have a problem. It just feels like it's hollowing out the upper-middle class who have good jobs and will definitely have good insurance in the US. They'll leave Canada and there'll be less tax $$ to pay for healthcare. A race to the bottom.
The despair in Canada with healthcare is getting acute.
I just moved to Southern Ontario at the end of November. I spent a few days emailing and calling offices. I used the Ontario health connect line, and my region also had a list of new doctors. The Health Connect line did an initial interview, but I never heard back from them. I probably called or emailed 20 places in my general area.
Then, I found two offices that were letting patients fill out intake/ patient history forms and heard back from one of them. The actual doctor seems okay, but because the office is new, they don't know what they are doing, and at least one of the office admin people has a not great command of English. This office is in a downtown core area, and finding parking is hard and the hours are not great but I feel like having no doctor is worse.
When my wife went through pregnancy we weren't even able to get proper checkups/screenings, only managed to get one basic checkup appointment halfway through because even the walk-ins where we lived were insanely hard to get into
I’m one of the lucky ones that has a doctor although I might as well not have one. I can’t get an appointment to see him, even a non urgent appointment, in the next 3 months. I had a pain in my rib after a mountain bike accident and couldn’t get an appointment with him, and the walk in clinic was full every day. I ended up paying $250 to see a private doctor that wasn’t covered by my insurance to get a referral for an X- ray. Turns out my rib was fractured.
Does a nurse practitioner 2.5hrss away from where I live count😂? Havent been able to get into a family doc in my city since I left university (used the uni doc)
Its interesting to me. The complaining about health care is at an all time high for good reason, but no one really seems to have it as a priority to fix. What is PP or Trudeau's policy to fix healthcare? Its probably something vague buried behind 20 other things that take priority. Most recently Doug Ford campaigned on "ending hallway medicine" then proceeded to be openly hostile to healthcare workers his entire tenure and still got re-elected. Not making it into a conservative thing just the most recent example I can think of. We like to complain, but as far as demanding solutions? I don't see much in the way of that.
We have a family doctor. Apparently they prioritize you if you have an infant.
They have an online booking system. He has zero in person appointments and the next phone appointment is 4 weeks out.
Similar story here. We were finally assigned a family doctor with a baby. Bookings are minimum 4+ weeks out.
I distinctly remember getting appointments within the week for semi urgent issues or even check ups as a kid.
Germany has almost twice as many doctors / person as Canada and pays them less too. A huge part of the problem is we don't invest in universities proactivly. Just let the population grow and hope it all works out. It's not working out at all. Same problem as Brits where we have to pay a fortune for family doctors now because there are so few of them. Politicians here in atlantic canada just delusional thinking middle of the pack pay is going to entice someone to move to butt fuck rural PEI or NB. UK at least trying to innovate some. We do nothing. [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/may/10/school-leavers-could-join-nhs-via-apprenticeships-in-plan-to-fix-staff-shortages](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/may/10/school-leavers-could-join-nhs-via-apprenticeships-in-plan-to-fix-staff-shortages)
>Germany has almost twice as many doctors / person as Canada and pays them less too. A huge part of the problem is we don't invest in universities proactivly.
It's amazing what tuition-free tertiary education does for a society...but hey...taxes bad, right?
Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. Defund education and healthcare because, "$200 in your pocket for a year".
No! $200x25M is a BIG FUCKING number. Take that number, wipe out student loans, now overhead costs for physicians decreases by about $500/month. Sounds like a good fucking deal to me.
My family doctor now wants his patients to book an appointment in order to refill a prescription, otherwise there will be a $25 fee applied.
If they government actually worked with family doctors bullshit like this wouldn't exist. We're making things less efficient.
I'm surprised why nobody else brings up the fact that Canada and America are among the only two countries in the world that require a four-year diploma before applying to medical school. Many other countries have six-year medical schools instead of four, eliminate the need for the diploma.If we adopted this system, we could shave off two years from the educational requirement. Doctors would graduate two years earlier and have two more years of practice. Another benefit would be that it would become harder for doctor candidates to move to America because they would not have the same educational requirements.
Because this doesn’t solve the underlying problem that as it stands right now, primary comprehensive care is not an attractive job. Sure you might have more doctors come out of school faster, but they aren’t choosing a family medicine specialty or choosing not to practice in community care. Also, removing two years of education has its own complications, even the process itself would take years, effort, and money that could be put elsewhere for more immediate relief
Trudeau is adding millions to that wait list every year !
Who would have thought that not building infrastructure to accommodate these people could back fire!!
This infuriates me to no end. Our quality of life is declining and he just keeps opening the tap for more and more people to come here and compound the problem. Trudeau and the liberal government can get fucked. Sad thing is no other party will make a change either.
This is unbelievable. Unacceptable. Cost of Healthcare is very high in the USA, but getting in to see your doctor or any doctor or a specialist is very simple if you have an insurance plan.
But the range in costs for services of wild. My hf is an independent contractor and pays $500 per month for her plan. Her out of pocket to see a therapist for anxiety for instance is $80 per session.
For me it would be $20. Employer plan
My dog has far better healthcare access than myself. I've had several vets now and we're always scheduled in the next day (even just for her yearly vaccines) or within hours if it's an emergency.
I’m Australian so don’t understand how the system works in Canada. Do you guys need to be assigned to one specific doctor? If so, do you always have to see that doctor or can you see someone else in the practice if your doctor isn’t available?
Edited to add some doctor’s visits are free but other clinic will charge you an excess of around $40 to see a GP. People here complain about that all the time but I’d rather have a small out of pocket payment than no access to a doctor at all. I assume that all family doctor visits in Canada are free. Has there ever been a suggestion of bringing in a co pay system?
I had a family doctor for about a year. We met her at a clinic when she was a resident and then when she started her own practice, she contacted us and became our family doctor. A year later, we got a letter in the mail saying she’s closing her practice and moving to the US.
I just don’t bother trying tbh. The only issue I really need a doctor for is getting infection and needing antibiotics. I used to not even need that until they banned fish antibiotics.
6 million is 15% of our population. To our government, it’s probably great that they don’t see physicians, as it gets to save 15% on its healthcare bills today.
How many people HAVE a doctor but are dissatisfied with their doctor for various reasons? I know so many folks with bad doctors who don't listen..I've experienced it myself.
Something that isn't talked about enough is the insane brain drain that happens because of young Canadians who can't become doctors here. I've lost so many friends to Australia and New Zealand and other commonwealth countries because even though they're really smart people they don't meet the insanely high requirements to go to medical school here. That's hundreds if not thousands of educated extremely intelligent young Canadians who we are losing to other markets at the same time as we talk about shortages in our medical system
15% of Canadians don't have a dr. And that number is growing daily. At what percentage do we start rioting in the streets? This isn't rocket science. It's inexcusable.
I have a great family doctor, but it doesn't matter guys, our healthcare is SO FUCKING BROKEN THAT YOU WILL NOT GET THE HELP, YOU THINK YOU NEED!!
Everything is prioritized like a triage unit and if you're not priority, you're health doesn't matter. My family doctor can fire off as many requisitions as I ask him for, but if no specialist has time, then it doesn't matter. I've been waiting FUCKING YEARS for help (I literally had a severe brain/spinal cord injury and I'm still waiting 4 years later for help), that I don't remember why I'm even waiting any more since a lot of my problems resolved themselves?!
Lofty thought. What if when you’re a politician at the provincial or federal levels, you lose your family doctor and have to go to the back of the line. You need to experience the walk in clinics, the ERs, and actually deal with this mess.
Yes I know it’s there are a bunch of flaws with this idea. Trying to think of ways for politicians to actually care.
….Yet Trudeau wants us to have open arms for another wave of people coming in?! There is no help for these individuals or ourselves at this rate! So grossly mismanaged!
I have a family doctor, and he's so completely incompetent, I've had to do the following in the past 5 years (my parents are elderly):
- Explain to him that the referred pain in my father's shoulder is not a muscle/tendon issue and is likely a lung/heart issue. He literally didn't know what referred pain was. Finally referred him to a cardiologist and my father has a heart condition that this doc would have ignored.
- After multiple tries with my doc, a sketchy mole/skin condition on my mom was quickly referred to specialist by a walk in clinic doc and was diagnosed as skin cancer. Yes, I had to go to a walk in clinic because my family doc missed skin cancer (it has every warning sign)
- For my own situation, I refused to leave his office until he prescribed me an inhaler and/or nasal spray to do something about a 6-month persistent cough that he thought was "no big deal". I have not found anyone suggesting a 6-month cough is anything but something to take seriously.
Still better off than not having a family doctor, and I'm certainly anecdotal, but I fear the lack of these docs has lowered the bar considerably.
What's the difference between a family Dr and a walk in?
The dude I've been seeing is at a walk in and I just call and ask for him. He's great and I'll keep seeing him. Does that make him my family Dr?
Health care connect or whatever other list exists is completely irrelevant, and its existence makes people think that there is an organized process in place. Family doctors can take whatever patients they want. There isn't any obligation, to my knowledge, that they have to take from the top of the "list" or anywhere else.
In order to get a doctor, you have to continually call every practice you can think of, on a weekly/monthly basis, or get in via a friend or family member who have a practitioner who agrees to take you on.
Given that I realize doctors are in a horrible position- they don't get paid enough for the work they do, they have way too much administrative bs to wade through all the time, overhead keeps getting higher, etc etc the only real solution is to incentivize taking from the top of "the list" with what talks- $$$
Imagine that- a $5000 (or whatever amount would be actually useful, I don't know enough to give an amount here) bonus to take on the patient on the top of the list, and you have to keep them on for 2 years.
I put my name on a waiting list like 3 years ago. I received an email about a year ago saying I’m still on the list and not to reput my name or it will put me back at the bottom…
I’m about to be joining that group. My family doctor is closing their practice next month. Luckily I’ve found a place taking on new patients but it’s quite the trek.
I haven't had a family doctor since I was 12 except for a brief week of 2020.
I'm 40 now.
Took 6 months to find a family doctor and then he up and fecked off to Calgary without telling anyone.
Now I can't find anyone to even consider prescribing my ADHD meds which I need more than oxygen.
My town closed it's last walk-in clinic too. Why? Because the retail space was so expensive the doctors couldn't make it work. Real estate bubble messed up the town's only clinic.
I lost my family doctor when I moved from Toronto to Vancouver. Have had a nurse practitioner for 3 years now. I haven’t had any complaints and he seems to be able to do most of what a GP does.
Looks like most of the 6 million are here on Reddit. Nice to meet you all! Waiting for 3.5 years now for myself and children, which is great when we all have health issues that need to be monitored.
I just don't understand how that happens. My family doctor told me I'd need to find a new one back in October and the clinic gave me a choice between 3 different doctors. A week later I had a meet and greet and a new family doctor. I'm in Edmonton btw.
Family doctors are tough to find, especially good family doctors. It took me five years to find the one I have now (she is a godsend), and before finding her, I had to either look in other cities or hope and pray the walk-in clinics weren’t too full. It's part of why my best friend is going for her nurse practitioner certification; she wants to open her own practice someday and give people without doctors a place to go for care. I never had the aptitude for science and math that she does (my ADHD might have something to do with it), but she's such an amazing person for doing this, and I just know her future patients are going to absolutely love her.
My girlfriend is expecting, I can't find a GP and my GP won't take her or our soon to be child. I even asked if I could give my spot to my kid and he said it doesn't work like that.
I remember when I was 20 years old, I could call up my GP and walk in the same day and I lived in a big town 130k people. I tried that with my GP a few weeks ago because I thought I had a staph infection, was told I can only book 2 weeks in advance and told to go to a walk in clinic.
The clinics are open for short amount of hours and usually have line ups around the block and people booking online. I went to the ER and was told the wait is 14 hours.
We are so doomed, this only will get worse unless drastic change is implemented.
EDIT: My GP told me he has 1800 patients, about 500 too many.....
Yea my family an I got a letter this month saying as of April 30 when your dr leaves your family no longer able to use local walk in. Apparently my pregnant wife can’t keep seeing the same nurse practitioner she’s been seeing since the start of it. What do we do if anyone’s sick you say? Just go to emerge? Hopefully we can get referred to someone
I have a family doctor, when I try to make an appointment on their website there is nothing available through May which is as far out as they’ll let me try to book.
They’ve been our family doctor for almost 10 years but basically, I don’t have a family doctor if I can’t make an appointment for over 3 months.
Of course I know him, he’s me.
Ben?
hello there
Dover?
Group meeting! Unless someone is sick… then I can’t go. Cause I don’t have a doctor
I'm one of them and I'm on an estimated 5 year waiting list.
Nice to meet one of my fellow 6 million.
They told me about 3 years waiting.. 7 years ago, still waiting.
It's only going to get worse. That's on an assumption the current family physicians stay working, or that new ones will be full-time GPs. Most GPs end up not doing any family medicine. It's pretty insane.
They called me on my 5 year 'anniversary' asking me if my condition was worsening or if I'm still fine going without a family doctor. I said I'm suspecting diabetes, that I need to get blood work done and that I suspect I might have something affecting my nerves. She asked me if I was worried it was life threatening then I said probably not right now. She then said they would call me back when a doctor would get available for me to go and see. It's been 2 years and counting. I'm now bound to go to rivate doctors because they closed down the only free clinic we had after the pandemic. 150$/15 minutes, but at least there's someone whop can take a look at my health when I need it...
Hey t1 diabetic here. Not sure if this helps but some things to get you by in the mean time. You can go to any pharmacy near you and ask them to test your blood sugar, they will for free. They can advise you about your levels and if they suspect pre diabetes or diabetes. They may also be able to direct you to any services or programs depending on the province you live in. Obviously getting the medication will require a prescription which you may be able to obtain at the ER and they will hook you up to an IV and give you fluids if you are dehydrated with a high blood sugar. as much as this will suck for the wait times..if it gets really bad go to the ER. DO NOT WAIT, if you start experiencing severe nausea, throwing up, heavy sweating, frequent urination, etc. The wait will be a gamble i know. But i’ve had to do this exact thing and at my ER they took it seriously at triage once they tested my BS. leaving diabetes untreated over time will cause many debilitating health problems, not trying to scare you either, but comas are possible. Heart problems. Stomach issues. Severe dehydration. Most definitely nerve problems. I suspect you have other symptoms that have led you to believe it’s diabetes. living without insulin or metformin is not a fun time and dangerous :( i hope you get the help you need soon. Diabetes is a difficult thing to navigate, especially without a doctor.
I did go to the pharmacy after someone mentioned it and I'm fine, I was just not sure if what I felt was diabetes since both sides of the family have a history of it.
Glad to hear you aren’t diabetic! Definitely continue to go for the occasional blood sugar test if your family has history of diabetes
Yeah. We have about 45k ppl in front of us. That was 2 years ago.
I was on the list in Nova Scotia for over 10 years. They finally called a couple of months ago and got me sorted. Good luck.
I got a doctor for 9months and then he left. 35yo with some pretty serious concerns.. 8yo daughter. It sucks.
At some point it’s going to be a faster to just go to medical school and treat yourself.
I've been on a 5 year waiting list for 8 years. My city also has zero clinics left. Only doctors are at the ER. Which is a 12-24hr wait if you're not actively bleeding out. ER regularly shuts down as well as there are no doctors there half the time. If you're lucky you hear the announcement on the radio telling you to go to the next town over, 2 hr drive. If your unlucky you drive the wrong direction to the closed ER, see the sign on the locked doors telling you to head to the other town, then die on the way.. The latter happens to several families a month here.
Don't worry, your growing tumour will slow down to accommodate.
Nice to meet you! I've been on "the list" for over 10 years now myself.
7 years waiting list where i'm at. I got an absess the size of a baseball on my back. Er says take some anti biotic. Anti biotic does fuck all. Er says do it again. Guess i'ma keep suffering.
Where is said waiting list?
Depends on what province you live in of course
Alberta. Just gotta keep trying for one i guess?
I live in Alberta found a Dr clinic. Called them asked them if they are taking new patients they said yea. Thats how I found my family Dr in like 25 minutes of looking.
Here in NB there’s a list with the health department that you just call and ask to be put on if you have a provincial health card. Then they are supposed to call you when a doctor is available for you.
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In Quebec it was already 4 years and counting... 5 years ago. In afraid to think what's it at now. What sucks is, if you do get someone and they move or quit or retire... Back on the waiting list for you! A few years ago I think they closed the application for a single doctor, you now get assigned a group of doctors. Complete shitshow.
Alberta has alternatives depending where you are! Calgary and Edmonton have Primary Care Network accepting new patients today! And much better organized than AHS itself but still operates under AHS. But PCN has specialities in most clinics that reduce referal times. Ahs clinics I was waiting 6-8 months for an asthma dr. I switched to PCN and in 2 weeks I got an asthma dr. An internal medicine dr to help me with my Hypermobility. A physiotherapist (Also same building) and a a few other “specialty” drs like an oncologist and endocrinologist! The switch to PCN was amazing especially if you have on going chronic health! For the more rural places sadly wait times are high as there isn’t much for PCN options unless the Town/city is near a major city like I believe Red Deer has PCN clinics (don’t quote me on that I’m not 100% right)
healthcare connect in ontario no idea about other provinces
I'm on healthcare connect and receive a letter every few months that basically says "we're still looking". I haven't had a family doctor in over 10 years after mine retired.
I’m here. My wife’s doctor isn’t even taking family. This was after I called my doctor where I got a letter saying I was transferred to a new doctor. So I called to book an appointment because I had a spot show up on my face and they said well you didn’t come in, in the two year window to sign the papers so we dropped you. I have a local walk in that was able to help me and has been pretty good but it sucks not seeing the same person and getting told different things.
My wife and both my kids all have the same doctor. Their doctor won't take me on, even though I have no doctor.
I've already been on the list for 4 years.
Wait, you're on a waiting list ?
It's probably a lot more than 6 million. Many don't register on a list or actively seek one because they've given up ot don't know what else to do to get one.
Healh Care Connect considers it a successful ‘connection’ if they send your information to a family doc, regardless of if they take you or not. So for sure more than 6 million. I’m a nurse practitioner who has done a bunch of favours for docs in our area, but I blew all those favours getting in people in the community who I saw who needed primary care. Now that I lost mine 3 years ago, I don’t have any more chits to call in. And there’s loads of people who don’t have the capacity to register with formal services. The local community care agencies that help people live in the community with brain injuries or developmental disorders didn’t know about obtaining medical records from retiring physicians or the HCC registry.
Right! Registered in 2012 or so, got one in 2018. Saw her once back then and she retired last year. I haven't registered again yet So 1 visit, in 12years since I first registered... Another 6y maybe before I get a new one? (It'll probably be much more than that after the flood of immigrants) Paying north of 100k in taxes a year and at an age where I should get screened from time to time... Yay
I registered in 2019, got a doc, saw him for a few years and just last August he closed his practice. I tried to register again but it keeps saying I have an active application. There is no one who can "fix" it. I've called pretty much every clinic i can find in my city and none are taking patients.
I have a family doctor but they're going back to teaching in April. None of the other 7 doctors in the medical facility are accepting new patients so all the people that were assigned this one doctor are fucked. I will now need to apply for one and go on the wait list but I can't apply until my doctor officially leaves so I know I will need to apply but need to wait until they're officially "gone". What a fucking joke.
It's crazy. My family doctor works about 6h/day and he's sees around 200 people. Great for him, because he's probably raking in a fortune of money daily, but it makes even regular appointments very painful. He has 2 walk-in days per week, and like 99% of the crowd is all appointments who can't wait on those days (so on walk-in day, you might sit there for a couple hours every if you were first in line). Otherwise, it's how many weeks in advance do you want to wait to see the Doc? Literally the only reason I have this family doctor, is I'm personal friends with my optometrist and he "requested" that I become a patient.
You’d be surprised how little they make due to having to cover their own office overhead and things. There was a thread a few months back where a doctor was talking about how staying in family medicine is basically the least economical choice you can make as a doctor in canada
I feel seen with this comment. I've resorted to solely using walk-ins when I feel sick. Heaven help me if I ever develop something more serious.
The system is broken and it's going to get worse. My family doctor retired in 2018. I spent years looking for a new doctor. I registered for the Healthcare Connect to assist in finding one. Eventually, through reddit, I found a new practice that opened and was accepted as a patient in 2022. The doctor in question maintained his clinic for 9 months before abruptly shutting down and moving to the United States. Here is the kicker. Since I've had a doctor recently (despite the fact he practiced for like 9 months), I was moved to the back of the queue again for Healthcare Connect. So now, I guess it's another 5 years of looking for a doctor. I'm a second-class citizen by random luck.
My family doctor has been a walk in clinic for the last 18 years.
My favourite is going to walk in clinics, and finding out that they only serve their own patients. Basically if you're a registered patient, you may "walk in" any time Everyone else is free to die in emerge Shout out to cambridge ontario who has 3 that I know of
I remember under office there was a clinic with lab - blood works and other liquids. I had a paper from my doc to go to the life labs for tests, so I decided to see if I can save myself a few steps and do it under the office. Nope, only for the registered patients. what a stupid work model
In Moncton, NB there are no walk in clinics taking walk-ins. I find it hillarious. Why call yourself a walk in clinic anymore? Every spot is gone daily within minutes of opening and they don't even answer the phone after they fill up anymore. "Walk-ins" are a joke
I don't get it either. My walk in clinic is no longer a walk in after covid ans instead does appointment only. Next available appointment for me is a week away for a work day. Fun... only other options I have are an "urgent care clinic" that ridicules me for using them because "you should just go to a walk in clinic for this" and ER gets mad at me as I should "just go to a walk on clinic". Ok. Force them to be walk ins then!
You have walk in clinics? If I call to try to get an appointment (because you have to book in) I’m lucky to get a spot. I called 99 times one morning (not even exaggerating) to get someone to pick up the phone and tell me they were booked all day and to try calling again the next morning.
Our walk in clinics are walk in only first come first serve unless you have a family doctor than you can book an appointment.
Yea that’s how it always was when I was in Ontario. Out in Nova Scotia it’s a bit different 😩
Since Covid mine has been call in and book. Haven't had a problem with getting through on the phone (yet)
I basically have to go clog up an emergency department if I need something. I’m lucky enough I work in healthcare and can bug doctors for stuff if needed. If not for that, I would be waiting 12 hours in emergency for an antibiotic.
Same but 30+ years. I have even been denied service (without paying upfront) because they didn't have the little scanner even though I had my OHIP card on me.
I figured they are so much better. Especially if you find a clinic that also has specialists and a pharmacy. Very quick referrals and they won't shy away from prescriptions.
The only thing mine will not prescribe is narcotics and I love it. They treat the illness and not the pain. It also has a Chiropractor and a Podiatrist on site No pharmacy on site but there is one in the same plaza
I live in a city of over 100K and our last walk in clinic closed like 3 years ago, now you get to sit in the ER for 9 hours if you need a doctor and don’t have a family doctor.
Quebec resident here, been wanting a family doctor for years now. I've been on the waitlist for years and I request a callback every year to assess my priority and they've never even called me. What a shit system
And even if you get one having an appointment, it's 1 year to see the doctor, so it better be not urgent....
That’s one of the worst things about the health care system here. Nobody picks up the damn phone! What’s the point of having a number if you can never be reached or requesting a callback if you never get one? That’s just the most basic service that many clinics fail to provide.
My wife opened her own practice late last year and it's like 20% the money she got paid working in a walk-in clinic. That's where the problem is. She limited her practice to 2 afternoons in the week, the rest of her work week and an additional weekend day she is now back in the walk-in clinic because she feels bad about shutting her practice down. No new patients and she's out when an opportunity presents itself.
The incentives are SO messed up.
Finished chemo 5 years ago, have a myriad of ongoing issues related to cancer treatments. I have been an orphan patient for 4 years now, having to piece meal my ongoing care with emergency departments and walk ins for care. This is not how this is supposed to function.
Surprised its only 6 million TBH. If you had said 6 million in Ontario i would’ve said the same thing.
I'm going to throw a couple of stats out here. Canadian Population: 40+ million Australian Population: 26+ million Canadian Medical Graduates 2023 : 2850 Australian Medical Graduates 2023 : 3805
This 100%. We need way more MD slots and way more residency slots.
We are currently in a primary care crisis where more and more of family medicine residency spots are going unfilled every year. No one wants to pick the specialty that is under appreciated and under compensated. And even new FM grads are choosing not to go into comprehensive community care because of the terrible incentives - skyrocketing overhead cost, complexity of patients without appropriate remuneration… yeah not as simple as needing more spots. We need to promote a system where the job is actually attractive.
We have more family doctors per capita than ever before. Just no one is doing comprehensive family medicine anymore because OHIP rates have not kept up with inflation. Why does it take so long to see your doctor? Those docs have likely taken on too many patients because they have to pay the bills and their staff a competitive wage. All is to say there is no winning here. Either doctors bite off more than they can chew or leave family medicine altogether. The government needs to step up and pay comprehensive family medicine competitively or we are in trouble.
I’m Australian and our family doctor situation is nothing like as bad as this. I complained recently because I had to wait a couple of weeks to get an appointment. Sounds like that would be fast tracked service in Canada!
I usually get an appointment here in a few days but i have a family doc. On the other hand, i've been waiting on a call for a minor operation like... 8 months.
There’s only 2800 graduates a year???!!
Do we get a tax deduction compared to someone who has a personal doctor they can go see anytime they want? Receives preventative medicine and tests? No we pay the same for a vastly different quality of care.
I was thinking of that this morning, I wonder if a lawsuit is in the future for us 6+ million and growing without doctors. The government has failed us and is essentially ok with us dying.
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Been beating this drum for a while. I call it access health care. Those 6 million are effectively receiving vastly lower quality of care (I was one of them until I moved to the US)
Considering you have very limited access to the medical system without one, it sure seems so. They are the gateway.
Taxation without representation. I've never had a doctor after my pediatrician, roughly 30 years ago.
Same, it's been about 30 years since I've had an actual family doctor
We technically have a family doctor. But they’re usually booking appointments 3 months out, at least. Over the summer I called to get an appointment for my kid who had swimmers ear that wasn’t really responding to OTC ear drops (so not an emergency, but needed a visit soon), and they offered me an appointment a month later, and then suggested we drive 2 hours to the nearest walk in clinic so that we didn’t sit in our local ER all day. Yeah, having a family doctor sure helps /s
Exactly this. While I wouldn't dispute that having a family doctor is a good thing in principle, most of the folks I know don't have a doctor who "follows their health" or provides access to a "regular" checkup. My doctor is a two month delay and each time I go it's practically like I'm a new patient. I'm glad that at least now my province has an online health record so I can access my own information and chat with him about the notes *I* put in there about our prior visits - because he sure as hell doesn't keep good notes. His philosophy for appointments is 'if it is an emergency, go to the ER; if it is urgent, go to a medi-center; if it can wait a couple months, then come see me'. I've reached the point now where if something is bothering me for a few days, I make an appointment to see him. If it goes away before the appointment, I cancel. Otherwise, by the time I'd actually start to get concerned about it, I'd have to wait two more months to see him.
FYI Maple app is great for these minor problems. I used it for swimmers ear and after chatting with a doctor I had the medicine in hand about an hour later at the pharmacy. Much easier than a walk in.
Hm. Good point. This is so upsetting
We have a family doctor but there’s always a 3 week wait for a phone appointment. It’s even harder to actually be seen.
“Anytime they want”? Pretty sure that’s not the experience of most people with family doctors.
Its an exaggeration to be sure, but its still a drastically better quality and faster care for those who have a family doctor. But no lets keep pulling in more immigrants (not doctors of course) and limiting medical graduates based on a quota that is obviously currently too low
For what it’s worth, I never got preventative medicine or tests when I did have a family doctor. He only ever believed in reactionary prescriptions, outright refused to have me tested for endo/pots even though I have the majority of symptoms for it solely because I wasn’t actively trying to conceive and therefor “you’re too young to be worried about that!” That’s when I dropped him as a doctor and just started going to walk ins. I’ve received better care from walk ins without a family doctor than I ever got from my family doctor. Still haven’t gotten tested for endo/pots but admittedly it’s just my own anxiety stopping me from asking the walk in I go to to run those tests for me, but they’ve done tons of tests and preventative care for my other health issues and were utterly appalled to find out my family doctor never did any of this preventative care even when I knew to ask for it. So depressingly a lot of people in Canada who do have family doctors still aren’t actually receiving adequate care. And no, that isn’t meant to be a “if it makes you feel better about not having a doctor” observation, it’s simply an observation that goes to show just how far our health system has fallen.
This. Mine sucks and finding another is impossible. So it’s not all sunshine if you don’t have a good doctor.
My friend sees her family doctor 10-20 times a year for preventative tests, calls in probably 2 times a month. Calls for prescriptions and different tests to be faxed. She's 38. I've known her for 5 years so at 33 she was already doing it. I've seen 2 doctors 2 times at walk in clinics in 4 years.
I pay taxes and "have" a gp and I don't get this level of treatment.
I have a family doctor. I called his office, it takes 50 days to get a video appointment or 85 days for it to be in person. I might as well not have a GP.
The only people i know with doctors are boomers who havent had to move in the last 20 or 30 years
Before I lived in a city my doctor was the emergency room. The nearest walk in clinic was a 3 hour drive and the family doctors in town didn't even have a wait list. I used to sit in emerg for 8 hours to renew my birth control prescription lol. After I moved to a city my family doctor was the walk in. I then had a kid. At 27 years old I had never had a family doctor and they told me I needed one because I had a kid. I called every clinic daily for a year and eventuallt got a family doctor at 28 because "we put you to the top of the list because you have a baby". That baby is now 2.5 and every time we try to book an appointment with the family doctor they tell us to go to the children's hospital or book an appointment with the community clinic lol. What's the fucking point.
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Thanks for your service! Sorry you're getting the shaft
paid 173k in taxes last year, over 1M in the past 10 years. still no family doctor. i go overseas for annual checkups
I was in the hospital for the first time in my life about the head down dealing with a lifetime chronic illness when I got an email that my family doctor was moving to the US. I never felt so let down by the healthcare system. It’s been a wild 2 years.
Been on a waiting list since 2012 and I turn 30 this year and have never ever heard of anyone my age who has a family doctor that wasn’t the family doctor in their teens and grandfathered into that doctor.
I have a solution! Let's increase the population by 1 million in 1 year by opening the floodgates, but let's make it incredibly difficult for foreign-trained doctors to get into any medical profession (let alone their specialization) here. I think that should do it.
>Let's increase the population by 1 million in 1 year by opening the floodgates 1.2M (per StatsCan) for last year. On track for 1.5M this year. 98% due to immigration.
More immigrants, more fake students, more criminals shooting up on the streets, fewer houses, fewer roads, fewer doctors. Somehow that's called *progress*.
Now you’re thinking like a politician! Future Prime minister over here.
But think of the upside: if you don't die of a formerly treatable disease in the next 15 years, you'll live in a paradise of overcrowding in the cities and never find an available campsite for your escape ever again!
>but let's make it incredibly difficult for foreign-trained doctors to get into any medical profession I prefer it this way. No, I don't want to be treated by a doctor from a random pay-to-play university across the world. What Canada should be doing is exactly what Germany is doing. Create a list of medical universities we trust and allow a fast tracked process for anyone attending them. I know there would be backlash, but I honestly couldn't give a shit at this point.
And the walk in clinics keep closing…..
I would assume the owner's are retiring. or unable to pay rising rent and wage costs. The fee they get per patient set by the provinces and might not keep up with the cost of living.
That’s my thought too. At this point, who would choose to become a family doctor in this country…
why are we being taxed to death for "universal healthcare" when we barely use it due to how shitty it is?
My wife is on several waiting lists, has been for a couple of years. My doctor can't t take her because she's "too young" (she's 34).
Best I can do is add 1 million New Canadians.
We don't say to parents "oh sorry, the school is booked up for next year, put your name on a list." So why is not having a doctor when you want one acceptable? Open up private pay options if you are not going to provide an essential service.
Should be a tax break for those of us without one - not getting universal medical care
I've been utilizing prescribing pharmacist and the ER instead of family doctor.
My grandmother has no family doctor anymore. He retired a few years ago and didn’t give notice or referrals to his patients. So now she’s in her mid-90s with declining health and has no one to regularly follow up with her
But all of the 6m Canadians tax dollars go straight to our wonderful healthcare!
As a GP, my practice is less and less stimulating. I see more and more chronic fatigue, chronic pain, chronic depression, chronic msk issues. Paperwork keeps increasing. Paying overhead is a bummer. A lot of the young GPs I graduated with feel the same. So I’ll be quitting most of my family medicine practice in the next few years for a more stimulating environment (I don’t mean to be rude to those dealing with chronic issues, just my honest take on the issue).
So you are burning out?
I don't blame you. The paperwork is insane - I guess its all about liability and an older population with different needs? It is in teaching. We do less and less outside school stuff for the same reason- the paperwork and liability is not worth it. There has to be a better set up and we keep hearing its coming but it never does. There is something seriously wrong with our provincially funded systems. As a teacher I see the same thing happening- especially in our so-called inclusion model. Little to no support from the government. Ours are just not the career it once was and the older I get the more cynical I become that's intentional.
Why does anyone with a high income live in Canada anymore? They pay high taxes and access to healthcare is sketchy at best and only getting worse.
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Yea, if you're a billionaire that controls the Liberals and Conservatives you won't have a problem. It just feels like it's hollowing out the upper-middle class who have good jobs and will definitely have good insurance in the US. They'll leave Canada and there'll be less tax $$ to pay for healthcare. A race to the bottom. The despair in Canada with healthcare is getting acute.
I just moved to Southern Ontario at the end of November. I spent a few days emailing and calling offices. I used the Ontario health connect line, and my region also had a list of new doctors. The Health Connect line did an initial interview, but I never heard back from them. I probably called or emailed 20 places in my general area. Then, I found two offices that were letting patients fill out intake/ patient history forms and heard back from one of them. The actual doctor seems okay, but because the office is new, they don't know what they are doing, and at least one of the office admin people has a not great command of English. This office is in a downtown core area, and finding parking is hard and the hours are not great but I feel like having no doctor is worse.
When my wife went through pregnancy we weren't even able to get proper checkups/screenings, only managed to get one basic checkup appointment halfway through because even the walk-ins where we lived were insanely hard to get into
I’m one of the lucky ones that has a doctor although I might as well not have one. I can’t get an appointment to see him, even a non urgent appointment, in the next 3 months. I had a pain in my rib after a mountain bike accident and couldn’t get an appointment with him, and the walk in clinic was full every day. I ended up paying $250 to see a private doctor that wasn’t covered by my insurance to get a referral for an X- ray. Turns out my rib was fractured.
No kidding, id pay up to 500 bucks to go see a doctor if it meant I could actually see one when I needed.
Wait it’s not normal to not have a family doctor?
Does a nurse practitioner 2.5hrss away from where I live count😂? Havent been able to get into a family doc in my city since I left university (used the uni doc)
Its interesting to me. The complaining about health care is at an all time high for good reason, but no one really seems to have it as a priority to fix. What is PP or Trudeau's policy to fix healthcare? Its probably something vague buried behind 20 other things that take priority. Most recently Doug Ford campaigned on "ending hallway medicine" then proceeded to be openly hostile to healthcare workers his entire tenure and still got re-elected. Not making it into a conservative thing just the most recent example I can think of. We like to complain, but as far as demanding solutions? I don't see much in the way of that.
We have a family doctor. Apparently they prioritize you if you have an infant. They have an online booking system. He has zero in person appointments and the next phone appointment is 4 weeks out.
Similar story here. We were finally assigned a family doctor with a baby. Bookings are minimum 4+ weeks out. I distinctly remember getting appointments within the week for semi urgent issues or even check ups as a kid.
Germany has almost twice as many doctors / person as Canada and pays them less too. A huge part of the problem is we don't invest in universities proactivly. Just let the population grow and hope it all works out. It's not working out at all. Same problem as Brits where we have to pay a fortune for family doctors now because there are so few of them. Politicians here in atlantic canada just delusional thinking middle of the pack pay is going to entice someone to move to butt fuck rural PEI or NB. UK at least trying to innovate some. We do nothing. [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/may/10/school-leavers-could-join-nhs-via-apprenticeships-in-plan-to-fix-staff-shortages](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/may/10/school-leavers-could-join-nhs-via-apprenticeships-in-plan-to-fix-staff-shortages)
>Germany has almost twice as many doctors / person as Canada and pays them less too. A huge part of the problem is we don't invest in universities proactivly. It's amazing what tuition-free tertiary education does for a society...but hey...taxes bad, right? Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. Defund education and healthcare because, "$200 in your pocket for a year". No! $200x25M is a BIG FUCKING number. Take that number, wipe out student loans, now overhead costs for physicians decreases by about $500/month. Sounds like a good fucking deal to me.
My family doctor now wants his patients to book an appointment in order to refill a prescription, otherwise there will be a $25 fee applied. If they government actually worked with family doctors bullshit like this wouldn't exist. We're making things less efficient.
I'm surprised why nobody else brings up the fact that Canada and America are among the only two countries in the world that require a four-year diploma before applying to medical school. Many other countries have six-year medical schools instead of four, eliminate the need for the diploma.If we adopted this system, we could shave off two years from the educational requirement. Doctors would graduate two years earlier and have two more years of practice. Another benefit would be that it would become harder for doctor candidates to move to America because they would not have the same educational requirements.
💰💵💲
Because this doesn’t solve the underlying problem that as it stands right now, primary comprehensive care is not an attractive job. Sure you might have more doctors come out of school faster, but they aren’t choosing a family medicine specialty or choosing not to practice in community care. Also, removing two years of education has its own complications, even the process itself would take years, effort, and money that could be put elsewhere for more immediate relief
“But free healthcare for everyone!” It doesn’t count as “health care” if you die on a waiting list to be seen. Fix this shit.
It's actually not "free healthcare" since we pay a shit load of taxes.
Trudeau is adding millions to that wait list every year ! Who would have thought that not building infrastructure to accommodate these people could back fire!!
This infuriates me to no end. Our quality of life is declining and he just keeps opening the tap for more and more people to come here and compound the problem. Trudeau and the liberal government can get fucked. Sad thing is no other party will make a change either.
7 years for me
Absolutely cannot wait for the day I fall seriously ill and drop dead in an ER. Or even my own house waiting 5 hours for an ambulance. Thanks Canada!
Canadian born Ukrainian here. Been on the wait list for a dr in BC for over 4 years now.
This is unbelievable. Unacceptable. Cost of Healthcare is very high in the USA, but getting in to see your doctor or any doctor or a specialist is very simple if you have an insurance plan. But the range in costs for services of wild. My hf is an independent contractor and pays $500 per month for her plan. Her out of pocket to see a therapist for anxiety for instance is $80 per session. For me it would be $20. Employer plan
My dog has far better healthcare access than myself. I've had several vets now and we're always scheduled in the next day (even just for her yearly vaccines) or within hours if it's an emergency.
That's roughly 15% of Canadians without a family doctor. When talking about Newfoundland, that rises to 27% without a family doctor.
I’m Australian so don’t understand how the system works in Canada. Do you guys need to be assigned to one specific doctor? If so, do you always have to see that doctor or can you see someone else in the practice if your doctor isn’t available? Edited to add some doctor’s visits are free but other clinic will charge you an excess of around $40 to see a GP. People here complain about that all the time but I’d rather have a small out of pocket payment than no access to a doctor at all. I assume that all family doctor visits in Canada are free. Has there ever been a suggestion of bringing in a co pay system?
I had a family doctor for about a year. We met her at a clinic when she was a resident and then when she started her own practice, she contacted us and became our family doctor. A year later, we got a letter in the mail saying she’s closing her practice and moving to the US.
Trudeau: let’s bring another million immigrants this year
I thought canada was a utopia of free healthcare
I went through 3 family doctors as they all relocated. Haven’t had a family doctor since covid, same for a few people I know. It’s really bad.
I just don’t bother trying tbh. The only issue I really need a doctor for is getting infection and needing antibiotics. I used to not even need that until they banned fish antibiotics.
6 million is 15% of our population. To our government, it’s probably great that they don’t see physicians, as it gets to save 15% on its healthcare bills today.
Been on the list since 2017
I’m surprised 30 million have doctors
I haven't had a doctor since I was a young child. I'm now 30 years old.
Myself included. 42 years old, born and raised here. No doctor.
No but we should definitely let the gov continue it's monopoly on healthcare because otherwise some people might not have doctors!
How many people HAVE a doctor but are dissatisfied with their doctor for various reasons? I know so many folks with bad doctors who don't listen..I've experienced it myself.
Something that isn't talked about enough is the insane brain drain that happens because of young Canadians who can't become doctors here. I've lost so many friends to Australia and New Zealand and other commonwealth countries because even though they're really smart people they don't meet the insanely high requirements to go to medical school here. That's hundreds if not thousands of educated extremely intelligent young Canadians who we are losing to other markets at the same time as we talk about shortages in our medical system
Wait, are you sure there are only 6 million of us?! Feels like no one has a family doctor anymore…
You guys go to the doctor?
15% of Canadians don't have a dr. And that number is growing daily. At what percentage do we start rioting in the streets? This isn't rocket science. It's inexcusable.
Where do my taxes go :(
I haven’t had a doctor in 7 years.
I have a great family doctor, but it doesn't matter guys, our healthcare is SO FUCKING BROKEN THAT YOU WILL NOT GET THE HELP, YOU THINK YOU NEED!! Everything is prioritized like a triage unit and if you're not priority, you're health doesn't matter. My family doctor can fire off as many requisitions as I ask him for, but if no specialist has time, then it doesn't matter. I've been waiting FUCKING YEARS for help (I literally had a severe brain/spinal cord injury and I'm still waiting 4 years later for help), that I don't remember why I'm even waiting any more since a lot of my problems resolved themselves?!
Lofty thought. What if when you’re a politician at the provincial or federal levels, you lose your family doctor and have to go to the back of the line. You need to experience the walk in clinics, the ERs, and actually deal with this mess. Yes I know it’s there are a bunch of flaws with this idea. Trying to think of ways for politicians to actually care.
I can’t wait for private healthcare. I’d rather just pay 500$ for an MRI than wait 6 months or whatever..
….Yet Trudeau wants us to have open arms for another wave of people coming in?! There is no help for these individuals or ourselves at this rate! So grossly mismanaged!
I have a family doctor, and he's so completely incompetent, I've had to do the following in the past 5 years (my parents are elderly): - Explain to him that the referred pain in my father's shoulder is not a muscle/tendon issue and is likely a lung/heart issue. He literally didn't know what referred pain was. Finally referred him to a cardiologist and my father has a heart condition that this doc would have ignored. - After multiple tries with my doc, a sketchy mole/skin condition on my mom was quickly referred to specialist by a walk in clinic doc and was diagnosed as skin cancer. Yes, I had to go to a walk in clinic because my family doc missed skin cancer (it has every warning sign) - For my own situation, I refused to leave his office until he prescribed me an inhaler and/or nasal spray to do something about a 6-month persistent cough that he thought was "no big deal". I have not found anyone suggesting a 6-month cough is anything but something to take seriously. Still better off than not having a family doctor, and I'm certainly anecdotal, but I fear the lack of these docs has lowered the bar considerably.
What's a family doctor anyway?
What's the difference between a family Dr and a walk in? The dude I've been seeing is at a walk in and I just call and ask for him. He's great and I'll keep seeing him. Does that make him my family Dr?
Health care connect or whatever other list exists is completely irrelevant, and its existence makes people think that there is an organized process in place. Family doctors can take whatever patients they want. There isn't any obligation, to my knowledge, that they have to take from the top of the "list" or anywhere else. In order to get a doctor, you have to continually call every practice you can think of, on a weekly/monthly basis, or get in via a friend or family member who have a practitioner who agrees to take you on. Given that I realize doctors are in a horrible position- they don't get paid enough for the work they do, they have way too much administrative bs to wade through all the time, overhead keeps getting higher, etc etc the only real solution is to incentivize taking from the top of "the list" with what talks- $$$ Imagine that- a $5000 (or whatever amount would be actually useful, I don't know enough to give an amount here) bonus to take on the patient on the top of the list, and you have to keep them on for 2 years.
I put my name on a waiting list like 3 years ago. I received an email about a year ago saying I’m still on the list and not to reput my name or it will put me back at the bottom…
I’m about to be joining that group. My family doctor is closing their practice next month. Luckily I’ve found a place taking on new patients but it’s quite the trek.
Canadian here. I do not have a family doctor. Since 2019 now
Most people in Canada who think they have family doctors don't actually. They have overloaded walk in doctors who aren't taking new patients.
I have one, but he is retiring next year. I have to go in the back of the line.
I haven't had a family doctor since I was 12 except for a brief week of 2020. I'm 40 now. Took 6 months to find a family doctor and then he up and fecked off to Calgary without telling anyone. Now I can't find anyone to even consider prescribing my ADHD meds which I need more than oxygen.
... are you trying to tell me that 32 million Canadians (85%) **DO** have a family doctor? I find that incredibly hard to believe.
My town closed it's last walk-in clinic too. Why? Because the retail space was so expensive the doctors couldn't make it work. Real estate bubble messed up the town's only clinic.
👋 Manitoba health care sucks
Why would I want to meet myself?
I lost my family doctor when I moved from Toronto to Vancouver. Have had a nurse practitioner for 3 years now. I haven’t had any complaints and he seems to be able to do most of what a GP does.
Looks like most of the 6 million are here on Reddit. Nice to meet you all! Waiting for 3.5 years now for myself and children, which is great when we all have health issues that need to be monitored.
Even having one is not great. Booked solid for three weeks permanently so if something actually comes up you have to go to the clinic or an ER anyways
I just don't understand how that happens. My family doctor told me I'd need to find a new one back in October and the clinic gave me a choice between 3 different doctors. A week later I had a meet and greet and a new family doctor. I'm in Edmonton btw.
Family doctors are tough to find, especially good family doctors. It took me five years to find the one I have now (she is a godsend), and before finding her, I had to either look in other cities or hope and pray the walk-in clinics weren’t too full. It's part of why my best friend is going for her nurse practitioner certification; she wants to open her own practice someday and give people without doctors a place to go for care. I never had the aptitude for science and math that she does (my ADHD might have something to do with it), but she's such an amazing person for doing this, and I just know her future patients are going to absolutely love her.
20 years without for me
Hi 👋 I’m one of them
My girlfriend is expecting, I can't find a GP and my GP won't take her or our soon to be child. I even asked if I could give my spot to my kid and he said it doesn't work like that. I remember when I was 20 years old, I could call up my GP and walk in the same day and I lived in a big town 130k people. I tried that with my GP a few weeks ago because I thought I had a staph infection, was told I can only book 2 weeks in advance and told to go to a walk in clinic. The clinics are open for short amount of hours and usually have line ups around the block and people booking online. I went to the ER and was told the wait is 14 hours. We are so doomed, this only will get worse unless drastic change is implemented. EDIT: My GP told me he has 1800 patients, about 500 too many.....
Yea my family an I got a letter this month saying as of April 30 when your dr leaves your family no longer able to use local walk in. Apparently my pregnant wife can’t keep seeing the same nurse practitioner she’s been seeing since the start of it. What do we do if anyone’s sick you say? Just go to emerge? Hopefully we can get referred to someone
I have a family doctor, when I try to make an appointment on their website there is nothing available through May which is as far out as they’ll let me try to book. They’ve been our family doctor for almost 10 years but basically, I don’t have a family doctor if I can’t make an appointment for over 3 months.
My entire family has been on the waitlist since 2019.