Jane Philpott is pictured outside her campaign office in Stouffville, Ontario on August 14, 2019.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Premier Doug Ford’s government has appointed former federal Liberal cabinet minister Jane Philpott to lead a new primary care action team, with a mandate to connect every person in Ontario to primary care within five years.
The appointment, announced Monday, is intended to “close the gap” for the estimated ten per cent of Ontarians who aren’t linked to a primary health care team, the government said in a news release Monday, first reported by the Globe and Mail.
The announcement is being made as the Ontario legislature resumes for the first time in 19 weeks after an extended summer break and as the government considers an early election call.
Mr. Ford’s government has faced criticism from advocates and opposition parties about a lack of access to family doctors in the province. The appointment of Dr. Philpott, a well-respected former politician and health professional, may be viewed as an attempt to address concerns that the government isn’t doing enough to address the issue.
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But the government has defended its record on health care, pointing to research from the Canadian Institute for Health Information. According to the CIHI, 90 per cent of people in Ontario had access to a regular health care provider in 2019-20, the highest rate in Canada.
In her own recent remarks, Dr. Philpott has estimated that 2.5 million Ontarians do not have a family doctor nor any other access to primary care, and that number is projected to grow to 4.4 million people in 2026.
Dr. Philpott, a former minister of health and Indigenous services in Justin Trudeau’s government, quit cabinet in 2019 over the Liberal government’s handling of the SNC-Lavalin affair. She now serves as Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences and Family Medicine at Queen’s University and has advocated for a system where each person in the province is automatically connected to a primary health care team. She likens it to every child being assigned to a public school in their neighbourhood.
“Our goal will be for 100 per cent of Ontarians to be attached to a family doctor or nurse practitioner working in a publicly funded team, where they receive ongoing, comprehensive care and people can access that care in a timely way,” Dr. Philpott said in a statement from Monday’s news release.
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Dr. Philpott will begin her position as chair and lead of the new primary care action team on Dec. 1. Her role is to provide and implement a plan to ensure the Ontario Health Minister can “further expand team-based primary health care across the province,” the government said.
The plan is to ensure more “convenient access” to existing teams with better service on weekends and after hours, as well as to reduce the administrative burden on family doctors and improve connections to specialists.
Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones said Dr. Philpott’s appointment will have enormous benefits for the province’s health care system.
“There’s no one I trust more than Dr. Philpott with her considerable experience to keep moving us forward and get us across the finish line of connecting everyone in the province to more convenient primary health care within the next five years,” Ms. Jones said in a statement.
“Doing so will have enormous benefits for people’s health and well being, as well as the province’s health care system by reducing pressures on emergency departments.”
Dr. Philpott also spoke at the Ontario Liberal convention this summer about the need for a “health home for every community,” and recently wrote a book on the subject called Health for All: a Doctor’s Prescription for a Healthier Canada. In a previous interview with The Globe, she said she is open to speaking with any party that wants to improve access to primary care and is non-partisan.
Dr. Philpott previously worked alongside the Ontario government in 2020, as a special adviser on its Ontario Health Data Platform.