Recommended reading: "Health for All"

Jane Philpott has a prescription to fix primary care

I rushed picked up Jane Philpott’s new book on Tuesday, the day it was released, at Perfect Books on Elgin. It’s called “Health for All: A doctor’s prescription for a healthier Canada”.

Philpott is a former federal Minister of Health, and the first doctor to hold that role. On the 40th anniversary of the Canada Health Act, she’s proposing a Canada Primary Care Act to ensure a legislated right to primary care for every Canadian.

Here’s the metaphor she uses to illustrate what this could look like:

“…primary care in Canada should function like public schools. Access to public school is one of the most universal social services standards that Canadians can count on. No one is left out. Children are assigned to a school based on their home address. If the population grows, a new school is built, and personnel are hired…

When you move to a new community, you never need to question if your child will have access to a school. You may choose to send them elsewhere, but you don't have to worry about whether they will be on a school roster in a specific geographic area. And when you move to another town, you don't hang on to the link to your previous public school board out of fear that you'll never get connected to another one.

Imagine if we had allowed public schools to be run the way we’ve allowed primary care to evolve. Imagine if we thought it was acceptable for millions of children to simply be on a waiting list to get access to education. Yet that's what we allowed to happen to primary care.

If we can design and implement universal access to public education, we can do the same for primary care. This should be our rallying cry.”

These primary care centres would be staffed by a team with doctors, nurse practitioners, and other workers like physios, occupational therapists, dietitions, midwives, and community paramedics. They would be open all week for scheduled appointments or for drop-ins, taking the pressure off emergency departments.

It’s a very clear any compelling vision for what primary care could look like in Canada. Read the book, or read her column about it in the Globe & Mail last weekend, or listen to her interview on The Decibel.

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The book was well-timed for me, as my team and I get set to launch an advocacy campaign around access to primary health care in Stittsville. Even though primary care falls well outside municipal control or responsibility, I still receive dozens of messages each month from residents who are unable to find a family doctor or access a walk-in clinic.

Many of them are newcomers from abroad or elsewhere in Canada. Some have recently found out their local doctor is retiring – one of the only family physicians in Stittsville. There’s just one walk-in clinic left in the west end (the Med-Team Group in Kanata) but they’re often overwhelmed by the demand. The Queensway-Carleton Hospital has seen record levels of emergency department visits over the past year. Ottawa Public Health estimates there are at least 100,000-150,000 people in Ottawa cannot access primary care, and the problem is more acute for people living in low-income areas, and areas with a high proportion of visible minorities. Not good.

We’ll be asking the provincial government to fund primary care and family health teams (FHTs) in the west end of Ottawa so that they can expand to serve more patients. Several clinics and existing FHTs applied last year to a provincial funding opportunity, but none were approved.

More to come…