It’s Going to Take More than Doctors and Nurses to Fix our Healthcare Problems

When we talk about Canada’s healthcare challenges, the conversation often begins and ends with one question: How do we hire more people?   

We absolutely need more people. Today, six million Canadians are without a primary care physician, and shortages exist across every part of the healthcare system, from personal support workers to nurses and physicians. The reality is that these challenges are likely to get worse before they get better.  Many of us have likely experienced this shortage in personal ways: waiting for hours in an overcrowded ER, struggling to find a family doctor, or trying desperately to secure a specialist appointment.

It’s tempting to think of problems (and solutions) in simplistic ways – to give an easy diagnosis with a one-step solution.

Unfortunately, hiring alone won’t solve this problem.

The experience of rural and remote communities makes that clear. Recruiting healthcare workers has always been more difficult outside major urban centres, and those challenges continue to compound over time. In Canada’s North, people still travel hundreds, even thousands, of kilometres for care that many Canadians consider routine.   I recently spent some time in Prince Edward Island, and a friend relayed her four-year struggle to find a primary healthcare provider on the island.  

So what else is needed, other than hiring?  Part of the solution could be to use our current resources more effectively.  Technology can make a meaningful difference, but it won’t be a magic pill on its own.

There’s clear evidence on the benefits of telehealth, for example, which can help patients connect with specialists sooner, determine when travel is truly necessary, and improve access to care without replacing the human relationships at the heart of healthcare. AI offers  similar potential. Imagine technology completing much of the routine work involved in reading medical scans or documenting patient notes, allowing clinicians to spend more time doing what only humans can do: caring for patients.  This could allow clinicians to have a better quality of work as well, reducing their administrative burden, instead of taking home stacks of paperwork after long days seeing patients.

What we’ve seen though, is that often technology focuses on the building part.  Building an app, developing the software, customizing the AI.  Already, medical providers and hospitals and clinics are presented with an array of technologies developed that promise to “solve their challenges” and “deliver value.”

The real challenge isn’t adopting technology, it’s building confidence that it improves patient outcomes.

At the Future Skills Centre, our work with University Health Network explored what responsible AI adoption looks like in practice. One important outcome was the development of an AI Bill of Rights, grounded in a simple principle: innovation must improve care without compromising trust.

But there’s another important reality: while healthcare rightly embraces the principle of do no harm, standing still also has consequences. When workforce shortages leave patients waiting longer for care, the status quo carries its own risks.

Canada doesn’t need a choice between people and technology. It needs both.

That means investing in AI that supports healthcare workers, not replaces them. It also means improving the quality of healthcare jobs, particularly for personal support workers, through better pay, stronger protections, greater recognition, and clearer opportunities for career growth.

The future of healthcare won’t be built by filling vacancies alone. It will be built by designing a system where people and technology work together, creating better jobs, better care, and better outcomes for Canadians.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint, official policy or position of the Future Skills Centre or any of its staff members or consortium partners.