As Ontario contends with a worsening family doctor shortage, Kingston has taken matters into its own hands.
With thousands without access to primary care, the City of Kingston launched its physician recruitment strategy in 2022—a municipal initiative typically a provincial responsibility, bringing 33 new doctors to the city through collaboration with local clinics and community groups at a cost of about $4 million, according to Workforce Development Analyst, Dajana Turkovic.
“It’s a provincial responsibility, but we’ve had to use municipal funds,” Turkovic said. “When 10 to 20 per cent of residents don’t have a family doctor, it’s a serious issue.”
While the city works to keep Queen’s School of Medicine residency graduates close to home by showing them what Kingston has to offer, its efforts have also attracted international attention, with four physicians from the United Kingdom having relocated to the city in the past year, with more expected.
A 2019-20 labour supply plan commissioned by the city had already identified the issue, showing many of Kingston’s family doctors were nearing retirement. Recruitment has been further complicated by Ontario’s mix of payment models, with some doctors working in family health teams and others running independent, fee-for-service practices.
“Kingston had a really significant physician shortage going into COVID,” Turkovic said. “We started seeing many older doctors planning to retire, especially those in fee-for-service models who were essentially running small businesses.”
Turkovic said younger doctors increasingly prefer team-based, collaborative environments over managing the administrative burden of private practice—a shift reflected in a 2021 Canadian Family Physician report showing new graduates gravitating toward hospital-based roles.
“If even one or two large clinics had closed without replacements, about 4,500 patients would’ve been left without a physician,” Turkovic said. The shortage, she added, comes with real consequences: longer emergency room waits, delays in prescription renewals for seniors, and disruptions in chronic disease management.
The provincially-administered Health Care Connect program—which attaches patients to family physicians—has pledged to match all registered residents by March 2026. According to Turkovic, this is a major shift from previous years, when many residents reported being on Health Care Connect for as long as seven years without being matched to a doctor.
Turkovic said the city’s efforts are part of a shift towards proactive planning in the face of ongoing healthcare strain. “Retirements will continue,” she said. “But with the work that we’re doing, the hope is that Kingston will be in a good spot.”
Still, she acknowledged the larger issue remains unresolved: municipalities across Ontario have spent millions in taxpayer dollars to address what’s fundamentally a provincial responsibility.
Tags
family medicine, Healthcare, Kingston
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