Some docs in Quebec are going private. I guess a socialized medical system ain’t working out as planned.
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… More than 780 doctors left the public system there last year, compared with 14 in the rest of Canada combined. The exodus of doctors for the private sector in Quebec has increased 70 per cent in just four years, according to data from its Health Ministry.
[Patients described month-long waits to the author of the article, even for their family doctor and/or acute illness. Doctors are encouraged to take on a too-large caseload. The self-pay option is a way around that.]
Critics say the situation in Quebec should act as a warning of what could happen elsewhere in Canada if incremental steps in the direction of privatization are allowed to add up to giant leaps.
/snip
“If you’re a family doctor and you want new patients, it’s not that a patient can just ring up and say, ‘Can you see me?’” Potter said. “You have to go through the government waiting list of what we call la clientele orpheline.”
[These lists are so old, they even include names of deceased.]
At his private clinic, Potter can see whoever wants his help, including those who have a family doctor monitoring them over the long-term and those who do not.
Dr. Bernard Ho, vice-chair of Canadian Doctors for Medicare, says the situation in Quebec is “a concerning trend that we’re seeing not only in Quebec but across the country as well of private pay family medicine.”
Quebec has the most family doctors going private for a number of reasons, including rules that make it easier to go back and forth between public and private, …
/snip
Ho said he believes patient safety will be compromised if private sector medicine continues to balloon in Quebec and elsewhere in the country. “There have been studies done in the U.S., U.K. and even here in Canada that show that when we outsource to the private sector, patient safety decreases, patient mortality increases,” he said.
In a comparison of for-profit versus non-profit U.S. hospitals published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, for instance, one notable difference associated with patient risk of mortality was that pressure to return a profit often equalled employing fewer highly skilled staff members per patient.
[As opposed to making patients wait for weeks or months for tests or treatment? Is that why America has so many Canadian patients? Asking for a friend.]
She said research from other countries shows that overdiagnosis and over-prescribing go hand-in-hand with private medicine.
For example, antibiotics do not work for colds or for ear infections or sore throat also stemming from viruses. “But because the patient is paying $150 to see you, they’re expecting a prescription. It’s a lot harder to say no because otherwise you lose a customer,” said Leblanc.
[I agree with the too many pills being prescribed, but is that the result of patients expecting it, or Big Pharma pushing it? Or both? And is the socialized system restricting medical treatments because it saves money to not write a prescription?]
Life on the waitlist
Like many of her friends, 62-year-old Marlene Harper had the same family doctor for 30 years, but that person has retired. That left both Harper and her husband, Keith Ball, who has diabetes, without a family doctor.
Harper said she put herself on the province’s waitlist 2½ years ago and never heard back…
[They have resorted to paying private doctors. Expensive health care is better than no health care.]
In 2022, the province established a system known as the GAP, which stands for Guichet d’accès à la première ligne, or Primary Care Access Point. If you need to see a doctor but don’t have one, the province finds you a one-off appointment, so — at least in theory — you don’t have to go to an emergency department. [So they strain the existing doctor pool to accommodate these folks, and one appointment means they may miss something important.]
In an email to CBC Radio, the office of Quebec’s minister of health said, in part, “the private sector — at no cost to patients — can be complementary to the public sector. However, we need to better regulate the growth of the private sector and that is what we are doing.”
Starting on Dec. 1, a new Crown Corporation called Santé Québec will take over operation and management of Quebec health care….
Santé Québec spokesperson Jean-Nicolas Aubé told CBC Radio its top priorities will include improving access to public health care, reducing steps for patients accessing care and addressing root causes of problems instead of applying “Band-Aid solutions.”
But Leblanc said she’s worried Santé Québec will only take the province further in the direction of “commercialization of health care,” especially given that a private health executive was appointed as CEO.
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