Premier Andrew Furey is hopeful that the number of people without access to primary care will start to come down.

Furey was responding to new numbers from the NLMA, indicating that 26 per cent, or 136,000 NL residents are not attached to a family physician.

He says government has a good relationship with the NLMA and they are trying to fix the problem, though that won’t happen overnight.

The numbers being reported by the NLMA represent an increase of 11,000 people saying they don’t have a family doctor from what was reported by the organization last June.

Furey says the numbers are “somewhat debatable,” noting that through Patient Connect they have about 34,000 people who do not have a family physician registered.

He’s not saying either number is perfectly accurate, but that as long as one person is on that list they’ll try to fix it.