The showdown continues between the Federation of General Practitioners of Quebec (FMOQ) and the Legault government. The doctors’ union rejects Bill 11, which aims to improve access to the front line. He qualifies it as “totally useless”, “totally incomprehensible”, “sterile” and “unacceptable” in a memoir which he will present on Tuesday to the Committee on Health and Social Services and whose The duty got a copy.
The FMOQ will be the first to comment on Bill 11 when the special consultations of the Health and Social Services Commission begin on Tuesday. Twenty organizations and stakeholders, including the Federation of Medical Specialists of Quebec and the College of Physicians, must be heard by parliamentarians by Thursday afternoon.
Presented by the Minister of Health and Social Services, Christian Dubé, last November, Bill 11 provides for obliging general practitioners to “add to their clientele only persons registered with the Guichet d’accès à un “. They will also be “required to make themselves available to insured persons through the government appointment system”. As of December 31, 945,260 Quebecers were waiting for a family doctor at the access counter, according to the Ministry of Health and Social Services.
The FMOQ says it recognizes “that there is a major problem of access to a first-line family doctor in Quebec”. “However, and contrary to what the government wants to convey with its bill no.oh 11, we would like to emphasize that family physicians want first and foremost to collaborate in implementing solutions that respect their realities and the interests of the population,” she explains in her brief.
The legislative text in its current form, argues the doctors’ union, “will not resolve the situation in any way” and “will degrade it even more”. “How can anyone seriously believe that solving problems with access to a family doctor on the front line can be reduced to a simple click in an electronic appointment system? we write. Family physicians treat patients. They do not manage goods. »
The FMOQ denounces the financial penalties that could be imposed on doctors who do not reach the Quebec targets. According to her, Bill 11 “significantly modifies the legislative regime in force since it would allow access to nominative information concerning the practice profile of physicians, presumably in order to crack down on those who do not meet the government support objectives.
Last fall, Prime Minister François Legault hinted that he had a list of names of doctors who were not taking on enough patients. Christian Dubé later claimed that this list was not nominative.
In its brief, the FMOQ is indignant at the government’s attitude since the start of negotiations concerning access to a family doctor. She argues that Quebec has recently entered into an agreement with her concerning the orchestrator (the government appointment system) and the legal framework for the use of information associated with it.
The union repeats that there is a shortage of 1,000 family doctors in Quebec and that “many other professionals can meet several needs without it being necessary to go through a doctor”. To reduce the waiting list at the counter, we must promote the “collective” care of patients by a group of doctors and professionals, he believes. A fixed remuneration per person, rather than per act, could be adopted.
“The Quebec government will not make general practitioners the scapegoats for the State’s negligence in the organization of general medical services,” concludes the FMOQ.
Even if the bill does not affect them directly, medical specialists also have much to criticize. In particular, they fear that by giving the department access to data on general practitioners, the government is creating a loophole, from which they too could suffer.
The bill “does not specify for what exact purposes such information may be obtained and used by the Minister. Thus worded, these provisions could be applicable to all information held by the Régie, concerning all professionals remunerated by the latter (doctors, dentists, optometrists, pharmacists, etc.),” writes the Fédération des médecins médecins du Québec ( FMSQ) in its brief.
The opinion of patients
In its brief made public on Monday, the Council for the Protection of the Sick says it does not understand why the bill only targets general practitioners, when its objective is to improve the first line. We must, he says, make more use of other health professionals in order to solve the problems of access and to unclog the emergencies.
“Why in other provinces, for more than twenty years, nurse practitioners have they the right to open their own clinic and welcome people for minor emergencies? asks its president, Paul G. Brunet. Why is it not working here? Because the doctors are stronger than they have been elsewhere. »
The Council for the Protection of the Sick also believes that the inequity between the regions with regard to the number of new doctors who can practice there each year must be remedied.
The Patients’ Alliance for Health and the Provincial Regrouping of Users’ Committees, which submitted a joint brief, believe that the government must “broaden the fields of practice” of non-medical professions (nurses, psychologists, physiotherapists, quote- they in example) to improve the first line.
“Entrusting doctors with individual responsibility to ensure medical coverage for the entire population of a given territory is nonsense, they write in particular in their memoir. There is a need to quickly review the responsibilities entrusted to FMGs [groupes de médecine familiale] and CLSCs. To compensate for the retirement of doctors, they propose to increase admissions to medical schools over the next ten years and to facilitate the integration of foreign doctors.
With Isabelle Porter