Former Federal Liberal Health Minister Philpott tasked with finding family doctors for every resident in Ontario
Former federal Liberal health minister Jane Philpott has been appointed by the Ontario government to ensure every resident in the province is connected with a primary care provider in the next five years.
Philpott will lead a new primary care action team within the Ministry of Health with a goal of finding every person in Ontario a family doctor or nurse practitioner working in a publicly funded team before 2030.
There are currently more than 2.5 million Ontarians without a family doctor, up from 1.8 million in 2020, according to data from the Ontario College of Physicians. More than 160,000 people were added to the list of those without a family doctor in a six-month period alone, the data indicates.
Minister of Health Sylvia Jones touted Philpott’s “considerable experience” in a release, saying the dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Queen’s University and director of its School of Medicine, is the ideal candidate to tackle the issue.
Philpott’s role as chair of the primary care action team begins Dec. 1. The government said she will draw on an interprofessional model of primary care that she designed with colleagues in the Frontenac, Lennox and Addington Ontario Health Team.
The plan will include enhanced weekend and after-hours service and strengthening links to specialists and digital tools.
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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made Philpott President of the Treasury Board in January of 2019. She resigned from the position in March, saying she was unhappy with the government’s handling of the SNC-Lavalin affair, a political scandal involving alleged political interference with the justice system by both Trudeau and his office.
She was expelled from the Liberal caucus in 2019 despite already being nominated to run as a Liberal in the next federal election. She ran as an Independent but lost her seat.
The Canadian Press contributed to this report.
