In June of 2024, I joined a growing number of Canadians who either don’t, didn’t, or no longer have a doctor.
This is a pretty jarring thing when you consider that this is the first time in my life that I’ve not had a general practitioner, or family doctor, and arguably it may be the most critical time in my life to have one. But my doctor retired — as they’re allowed to do — and nobody jumped up to buy the business, if that’s what actually happened, or rather, didn’t happen.
I’ve been blessed with good health more or less, once you get past those three heart attacks and life-related stress, but all that considered, I feel like I’m in pretty good shape, so God does have some time to smile down upon me, which is fabulous, and I thank Him for that everyday. Thanks to the Ottawa Heart Institute, I’m like a brand new guy in the heart department. And thanks to the kindness and generosity of people generally, the stress department isn’t as over-worked as it once was.
There’s just one thing, though, and it’s kind of a biggy. God, despite His splendour and magnificence, doesn’t write prescriptions. As I think about potential flaws God may have, I feel this may be the only one. But as I said, it’s kind of an important one.
Yes, I’m on the list. Yes, I went through the Ministry of Health, like everyone else. They’ll get a hold of me when they match me with a physician, but I could well be dead by that time, and only God can do the retro-active death thing, so I feel I’m kind of cooked.
I tried to slip one of my pharmacists a 5-spot to give me any backroom skinny on doctor availability in town, but that pharmacist looked at me kind of funny. I’m not sure if it was because of some sort of ethical standard or the fact that the 5-spot was insulting and should have been a 10-spot, or perhaps a 20-spot. Make no mistake, I would have coughed-up the twenty no problem, right there on the spot, for a lead at getting a doctor, but I guess I must have felt I was negotiating or something, something pretty stupid to be doing in a line full of people with no doctors.
I came across something recently that has a mid-sized Ontario city tackling their doctor shortage in, what for me, was a novel way. I’m fully aware of the very successful efforts that have been made locally to attract doctors to this area, and I applaud those efforts and encourage them to continue. But there were elements of this city’s approach that appeared new to me, so if they’re already being done in this area, I apologize for being late to the party.
Orillia, Ontario, is a small city of some 30,000 people just to the north of Barrie, which is just to the north of Toronto. At three-and-a-half times the size of Renfrew, it’s not totally out of sight as a comparable for our area, and like our area, Orillia needs doctors.
The municipal government there has seized on a facet of doctorship that perhaps goes unattended in other approaches to doctor recruitment. That’s the fact that most doctors, despite being doctors, are also small business-people who hire employees, buy/rent/lease office space, and generally become business managers on top of their chosen profession. That stuff all comes with a pretty hefty price-tag. Not to mention the price tag of walking into an established doctor’s business/practice by buying it. In other words, it can be expensive being a doctor, and incredibly expensive if you’re a doctor taking over a practice you just purchased. It can be a real problem, and represents a lot of OHIP billing moving forward.
Orillia has jumped on this, and their pitch is simple, progressive, and easy to understand.
If you’re a new doctor, Orillia is calling.
They’ll offer to hire you as a municipal employee, with salary, benefits, vacation time, and a pension.
As of February 2025, which is pretty much today, the average doctor in Ontario pulls in approximately $166,000 a year, which is less than some municipal staffers make, which provides a shot of context into the idea.
You’re not the only doctor Orillia is targeting, they’re going after a bunch of them with the same pitch. And the real draw may be what else Orillia has in mind.
The city will build the office space, clinic space, lab space, and all the other spaces required to house a number of practices. And the city will pay for all of that, as well as taking care of the administration of those spaces. In other words, the city is willing to take the small-business aspect away from doctoring and allow doctors to focus on being doctors.
The doctors will all still bill OHIP, but that money gets directed to the municipality, which then gets directed to the infrastructure, support salaries, and even doctoring salaries. If done correctly, it can come across as revenue-neutral with the town owning physical assets in the buildings.
What about doctors who earn over the average wage, are specialists, or wunderkinds in the industry? To this, I can’t see why the same model can’t be applied. It’s not that every town employee makes the same salary, so there’s no reason for all doctors to have a cookie-cutter wage either. Qualifications, experience, and all the rest of it would be considered, of course, and having a doctor on staff pulling down $300,000 a year would mean that we’re fortunate enough ton have a doctor who commands that kind of salary through professional expertise and qualifications. As well, expensive doctors tend to bill OHIP expensively, so I guess it’s all proportional.
I don’t know if municipally-employed doctors would belong to regular unions like CUPE and therefore subject to salary negotiation, but there would, of course, have to be some vehicle to allow for doctor salaries to increase over time. Perhaps they would be considered an “essential service,” but usually professions considered “essential” kind of get a premium salary bump just for that fact.
On top of this throw in the golf course memberships, the car dealership provision of vehicles, and a neighbourhood kid to cut the lawn, and another to watch the kids. All the stuff we’re currently doing.
If this is too big of a stretch for a place like Renfrew, especially with its current limitations emanating from a variety of financial debacles, it’s certainly something that the County of Renfrew might entertain, if it hasn’t already. The County already has a bit of a track record of building things then leasing them to users, and so the Orillia thing may appeal to them.
There’s a lot of stress around not having a doctor. Plus, there’s a lot of people out there experiencing that stress. Imagine an initiative that relieved them of that. One that may not cost money in the long run, and in fact may represent a profit investment long-term.
Happy voters. With doctors.
I’ll be keeping my eye on Orillia to see how it all turns out.
COVER PHOTO: Image by jennycepeda from Pixabay
NEWSMAGRENFREW 