For the sake of transparency, I want to inform readers that I have been a retired physician for over three years. I am therefore not registered on the board of the College of Physicians. Here I am, an ordinary citizen and patient.
I am fortunate to be followed by a conscientious and competent family doctor and hematologist-oncologist who prescribed relevant blood samples for medical follow-up of various chronic but stable ailments. The blood samples were taken on June 15. The RAMQ, on the Carnet santé Québec site, advises me that the results will not be available before August 12 at the earliest, to allow the attending physicians to read the data from the expert assessments carried out.
I find it hard to understand this two-month delay. In my opinion, the medical file should belong in priority to the patient, and not to the doctor. It is the patient, as a citizen, who pays with his taxes for the operation of the RAMQ’s laboratories and computer services, at great expense. I see obvious corporatism here on the part of paternalistic doctors. We should rather encourage patients, who are generally well-informed, to participate actively in the follow-up of their chronic ailments instead of infantilizing them to the point of considering them incapable of understanding the slightest laboratory result. The State has spent a fortune to set up the highly confidential and efficient Health Book site. The problem is that the patient, who is the beneficiary par excellence, is the last to be able to benefit from it.
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