Kingston to pair every resident with a family doctor by end of 2025

Kingston, Ont., aims to connect every patient in the city with primary health care by the end of the year.

It's an ambitious goal, especially for a community that's seen the number of residents without a family doctor stubbornly stuck around 30,000, while people have spent hours lined up outside clinics for a chance to secure a health-care provider.

"I think that's a realistic target," said Craig Desjardins, director of strategic innovation and partnerships, whose responsibilities include heading up physician recruitment.

Over the past three years, Kingston has spent $3 million in municipal money to attract 25 doctors.

In that time, the number of people without primary care has dropped to approximately 10,000, Desjardins told council during an update on April 1.

It's expected that number could be zero by the end of 2025, according to the update, though Desjardins said the effort to roster everyone might "leak into early 2026."

One of the recent arrivals is Dr. Anirudha Garg, who grew up in Kingston from the age of five, but earned his medical degree in Australia.

He left behind a home near the Great Barrier Reef, uprooting his family and navigating red tape for three years in order to return to Canada in 2022, only to find the healthcare system a "mess."

"Some of my neighbours learned that I was a family doc, and I had people coming to my door begging me to take them on," he recalled. "That made me so sad."

Garg stressed the importance of family physicians as the key to accessing care, offering kudos to the city for the strides it's made.

"Everybody deserves a family doctor. Every single person," he said. "Kingston has, through many different people working their butts off, come together to produce this amazing outcome."

Council to spend $600,000 more

During this week's meeting, councillors also offered congratulations and voted unanimously in favour of forking over another $600,000 to support physician recruitment this year.

"It's a little sad that we have to use municipal taxpayer dollars to connect people with health care, which is a provincial responsibility," said Kingscourt-Rideau councillor Brandon Tozzo. "At least our money is going to a good effort."

The city did credit the provincial government for it's $1.8 billion plan to set up primary care teams, a program that's being piloted in Kingston.

Desjardins said it's been crucial for retaining graduates from the Queen's School of Medicine and is popular with new doctors seeking work-life balance.

"They want a job, and they want to practice medicine ... and they want to be able to go home and enjoy themselves and have a family," he explained.

In order to show what the city has to offer, local tourism officials have helped wine and dine potential physicians. Those who sign on are set up with a relocation specialist for six months.

Desjardins said that's proven especially helpful for international doctors looking to settle in Canada, allowing the city to attract nine so far.

The specialists assist with finding housing, work for spouses and even explaining how the education system works or which hockey league to join.

"They were joking the other day, they don't do any sort of dating service, but they do everything [else]," Desjardins said with a laugh. 

Garg said his family has felt embraced by Kingston, describing it as being close to nature and big urban centres, while remaining the kind of city where people hold doors for each other and neighbours stop to chat while out walking their dog.

While the region has a lot to offer, there are still plenty of hurdles for family physicians, he said, adding "this is not mission accomplished."

The bureaucracy he spent years navigating to get his license still takes about 12 months and doctors themselves face burnout, pressure and mountains of paperwork.

'We're not stopping'

Another major challenge to maintaining health-care coverage in the area is keeping up with retirements.

The council update points out that while 25 new doctors have set up shop in Kingston, 17 of them replaced retirees.

With more doctors planning to stop working in the next few years, city staff are already looking to line up replacements.

Desjardins said it wasn't until the city added a $100,000 incentive that "all of a sudden we got a lot of response" from applicants.

While the approach has proved successful, it's also raised concerns about creating a bidding war for care, with Kingston's mayor describing the situation as "madness" last year.

Still, staff aren't just relying on cash to attract doctors. The city has also built up its relationship with the family medicine program at Queen's University and credited the city's clinic grant as another reason the wait list has been reduced.

That program pushed health-care providers to get creative, offering up to $100,000 for projects that boosted roster sizes.

Desjardins said some clinics hired staff, others added new technology to tackle paperwork, while some expanded their footprint, all of which helped them take on roughly 6,000 new patients and retain 5,700 others, without adding any new doctors, according to his report to council.

He told CBC that three years ago he would never have guessed Kingston would be close to a solution to its doctor shortage, describing the city's success in one word: incredible.

There is one other important lesson the city has learned. It had a doctor recruitment program about a decade ago but then it ended. That won't happen again, according to Desjardins.

"We're not stopping as long as one person in the community doesn't have a doctor," he said. "There's still work to be done."