I can make some comments, and then, of course, I would love to hear from the two family medicine experts we have here today.
I have really tried to take their approach in this role. The CMA has really tried to take the approach of listening to the people that are experts in family medicine regarding the pebbles in their shoes. What are the things that are preventing them from doing this work?
Every family doctor I have encountered and met through my career has chosen that area of medicine because they really believe in wanting to provide longitudinal continuity of care to families from birth to death. The fact that the system is taking that joy in providing that type of very meaningful care away from them, I think, speaks to the fact that it's fundamentally broken.
Family doctors want to provide that care without having to worry about all of the business aspects of medicine, such as rising inflation, rising costs of providing the primary care infrastructure, rising administrative burdens, inability to spend the time their patients need from them to address complex issues, and not having the team around them to provide comprehensive care.
If we project that to the future, they want to be on a team where their patients have a medical home. That medical home means that the provider that patients need is available to them for the problems they come with, that they are seen as a whole person, that the care is comprehensive around that, and that their job is thinking about patients and what they need. They do not want to think about how to run this small business, how to work through this fee schedule of 18,000 different fee codes and manage all those billings. All of these administrative pieces really detract from the heart of what medicine is, which is a relationship with patients.
If we can get back to that, and really look at addressing the health care issues that Canadians need, we can have a healthier population, a healthier workforce, and a new future for family medicine where it again becomes one of the most desirable areas of practice for new doctors.