Family Physicians Stopping Practice During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Ontario, Canada.

Abstract

We conducted 2 analyses using administrative data to understand whether more family physicians in Ontario, Canada stopped working during the COVID-19 pandemic compared with previous years. First, we found 3.1% of physicians working in 2019 (n = 385/12,247) reported no billings in the first 6 months of the pandemic; compared with other family physicians, a higher portion were aged 75 years or older (13.0% vs 3.4%, <i>P</i> <0.001), had fee-for-service reimbursement (37.7% vs 24.9%, <i>P</i> <0.001), and had a panel size under 500 patients (40.0% vs 25.8%, <i>P</i> <0.001). Second, a fitted regression line found the absolute increase in the percentage of family physicians stopping work was 0.03% per year from 2010 to 2019 (<i>P</i> = 0.042) but 1.2% between 2019 to 2020 (<i>P</i> <0.001). More research is needed to understand the impact of physicians stopping work on primary care attachment and access to care.