Thank you.
Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for inviting us back to speak with you again so soon after recently meeting on April 4. This reinforces to us the committee's interest in the acute crisis facing Canada's health workforce.
My thanks go also to my CMA and CNA colleagues for working together with the CFPC in a spirit of collaboration on an issue that is truly important to the well-being of Canadians.
My name is Brady Bouchard. I'm a family physician and the president of the College of Family Physicians of Canada.
I am joining you today from Treaty 6 territory and the homeland of the Métis. I'm joined by Dr. Francine Lemire, executive director and CEO of the CFPC. Francine delivered our remarks at the earlier meeting, and I will speak today and present in English. We will be pleased to respond to questions in both official languages.
We appreciate the committee's interest in the road map document that we developed with our colleagues at the CMA and CNA and appreciate the summaries provided by the previous speakers. This document is more relevant than ever. Over the last week, there were several high-profile articles noting the alarming trends in filling family medicine residency positions.
The 2022 Canadian Residency Matching Service match data continues the slow but steady increase in unfilled family medicine residency spots. Now is the time to address the root causes of that to ensure long-term sustainability.
CaRMS matches the approximately 6,000 medical trainees to the training programs for different medical specialties. In the 2022 match, 1,569 family medicine residency positions were available. Of those, 225 are currently unfilled after the first round—14%. This number has never been higher.
As a practising family physician still in the relatively early stages of my career, I can tell you that family medicine is a fantastic specialty, but these numbers don't lie. There are increasing pressures on our specialty right now that are making it less attractive to medical students.
Practising physicians are reporting record levels of stress and burnout, and some are beginning to retire early, reduce their clinical commitments or leave the profession altogether. With the cohort of new graduates set to be reduced, the potential future implications are significant. This should be a concern to everyone in Canada because of the fundamental role that family doctors fill in our health care system.
The road map developed with the CMA and the CNA provides a series of actions that can be taken to reinforce our health workforce. The CFPC supports these recommendations and stands behind this pragmatic and actionable plan that will support Canadian family medicine and health care in general, but for that to be true, the plan needs to be carried out.
From the perspective of family medicine, there are two areas of focus in the road map to focus on.
The first is the recommendations in support of currently practising family doctors. Our members have highlighted for us that the number one issue that would make a difference right now is to reduce the administrative burden they are carrying. That means reducing the amount of time and energy they are spending on things like the general clinic administration, record-keeping and paperwork that take away from direct patient care. Letting family doctors do what they do best—caring for their patients and coordinating care—will help reduce burnout, increase satisfaction and retain our practising docs.
The second area, made obvious by my comments about CaRMS, is about changing the practice model of family medicine in the long term so that the specialty again becomes an attractive first choice for our doctors of the future. Newly graduating medical students want to work in teams, where their skills are put to best use and they have the resources they need to care for their patients but are also able to find that work-life balance that is sorely lacking for so many of us.
This is why the CFPC strongly supports the recommendation to adopt the primary care integration fund, which will allow practices across Canada to evolve into high-functioning collaborative teams and, in turn, improve access to care for all in Canada. Progress on this front has been made, but we need to see a standardized, well-supported approach that leaves no province, territory or community behind.
We look forward to the upcoming question-and-answer section of this meeting. Thank you again for your time and interest.