TORONTO — Ontario family doctors left the profession at the start of the pandemic at double the rate of the years before COVID-19 hit, new research indicates. That accounted for an estimated 170,000 patients losing access to primary care, and was higher than the 1.6 per cent of family doctors who stopped working during a comparable period each year between 2010 and 2019.
That disproportionately affected the family doctors who bill the province for each patient they see, known as the fee-for-service model. Family doctors in walk-in clinics are an example of that model, Kiran said. They also analyzed the years 2010 to 2019 to figure out the baseline for those who left every year to ensure what they saw between the start of the pandemic and the year before wasn't a blip.
There's also been a higher proportion in parts of the Toronto area and in Ottawa, Kiran said, although the issue hits harder in rural Ontario.