A Dominique Anglade Liberal (PLQ) government would ensure that every Quebec patient has a family doctor.
Anglade made the promise on Tuesday as the party starts campaigning ahead of the Oct. 3 election.
As in every election campaign, health care will be a key issue for politicians in the coming weeks, especially in terms of better access to the health-care system.
Anglade was in the Outaouais region to make the announcement, which was already outlined in the party's platform announced in June.
To reach its objective, a Liberal government would train 1,000 more doctors than today, which corresponds to the number of doctors needed to meet the needs of the Quebec population, according to the evaluation made by the Fédération des médecins omnipraticiens du Québec (FMOQ).
Quebec's four faculties of medicine would need to, therefore, take in a total of 1,000 additional students.
Since Francois Legault's Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government came to power, the situation has been getting worse. In 2018, it was estimated that some 400,000 people were waiting to get on a family physician's patient list. Today, there are more than one million.
The PLQ intends to prioritize people with chronic illnesses or mental illnesses, seniors and people with disabilities.
The Liberals also pledged to better distribute family doctors across the province and to create more family medicine groups (FMGs) so that Quebec has a total of 400, some of which could operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
In addition, a Liberal government would respond to a consistent request from family doctors by allowing them to spend less time in hospital and more time caring for patients in their clinics, an approach that should help relieve hospital emergency rooms.
Among other things, Anglade would also like to triple the number of "super nurses" by 2030. Specialized nurse practitioners (NPs) could, in many cases, take over from physicians in FMGs for a range of minor health problems by 2030.
The Liberals also want to train more nurses and recruit them from elsewhere in Canada and abroad. They also pledge to abolish mandatory overtime, a recurring demand from nurses.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Aug. 23, 2022.
