Ontario’s response to COVID-19 shows that mental health providers must be integrated into provincial public health insurance systems

Abstract

The fear, grief, social isolation, and financial and occupational losses from COVID-19 have created a mental health crisis. Ontario’s response highlights the shortcomings of its physician-only public healthcare system that limits public access to appropriate and sustainable mental healthcare. Specifically, Ontario’s attempt to rapidly expand mental healthcare access in response to COVID-19 includes new Ontario Health Insurance Program (OHIP) billing codes that enable physicians to provide telephonic trauma counselling and patient self-serve online tools while psychologist and other registered mental health provider services have been largely left out of the provincial response. Why? Non-physician mental health providers operate outside of the provincial healthcare infrastructure, including the provincial payer (i.e., OHIP) that facilitated the provincial physician response. A physician-centric mental healthcare system limits public access to quality, sustainable, evidence-based mental health services because most physicians do not have the capacity, training, or desire to provide mental health services. To improve public access to needed mental health services, provinces should integrate psychologists and other registered mental health providers directly into their public health insurance systems. Integrated providers can be strategically and sustainably mobilized to respond to COVID-19 and future mental health crises.