Kingston wants residents without family doctors to sign up for Health Care Connect

City officials say thousands of Kingstonians are without a family doctor. Now, they’re trying to remedy that.

The municipality has asked residents to register with Health Care Connect, a provincial waiting list for family doctors, to more accurately determine the number of people without a health-care provider.

This number will help the city make the case with the province for a special designation to attract more family doctors to the city.

“We need to show the Ministry of Health to provide them with true numbers of the number of unattached patients,” said Debra Lefebvre, a member of the city’s health-care task force.

Lefebvre says the city is estimating that about 15,000 people in Kingston are without a family doctor, but it wants accurate numbers to bring to the province.

Kingston isn’t currently designated as a community with a high need for family physicians.

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When considering funding a study of family doctors in Kingston, the city said that doctors conducting research and running the medical school at Queen’s University, physicians working in correctional facilities and those offering specialized care at Kingston Health Sciences Centre are all counted in the total number of physicians in Kingston, making it appear as though the city is flush with doctors.

Years ago, Kingston was designated by the province as being in “high need” of family doctors, which allowed the city to offer temporary financial benefits for primary care physicians. Funding under the high needs designation ended in 2017, and several doctors recruited under the incentives have since left the city, Lefebvre told Global News for a previous story.

The task force is hoping that accurate numbers from Health Care Connect will help it make its case to the province.

“The ministry needs the data, we desperately need both docs to complete the survey and we need patients to sign up through Health Care Connect,” said Dr. Veronica Legnini, another task force member.

Not only will Health Care Connect help the city get a more accurate snapshot of those who need a family physician, but it will also put those without doctors in line for a primary care provider.