The Ontario government is allocating an initial investment of $9 million through the 2024 budget, Building a Better Ontario, to initiate the design and planning phases for York University’s forthcoming medical school in Vaughan.
Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital; Credit: Mackenzie Health
Per the news release, this institution marks a significant stride as it will be the first of its kind in Canada, concentrating on the training of primary care physicians, a crucial step in fulfilling Ontario’s commitment to ensuring universal access to primary care providers.
Premier Doug Ford emphasized the importance of this initiative in enhancing access to primary care, stating, “As the first medical school in Canada focused primarily on training family doctors, this new school will make an enormous impact in the lives of people in York Region and across Ontario.”
Scheduled to commence operations in September 2028, the new medical school is projected to offer up to 80 undergraduate seats and up to 102 postgraduate seats initially, with plans to expand to 240 undergraduate seats and 293 postgraduate seats annually at full capacity. Notably, about 70 per cent of the postgraduate training seats will be dedicated to primary care.
The city of Vaughan will transfer land to the University for the construction of the School of Medicine within the Vaughan Healthcare Centre Precinct, adjacent to Mackenzie Health’s Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital.
Ministry of Health projections indicate that alongside other initiatives, including expanding interprofessional primary care teams and facilitating the integration of internationally trained doctors, these efforts will potentially connect up to 98 per cent of Ontarians to primary care in the coming years.
The provincial government says this expansion is part of a larger initiative encompassing all six existing medical schools in the province, as well as the forthcoming medical school at Toronto Metropolitan University, slated to commence operations in 2025.
With additional funding earmarked in the budgets, the province is set to increase the total number of undergraduate and postgraduate medical seats to 1,212 and 1,637, respectively, by 2028.