Quebec hopes to halve the number of patients waiting for a family doctor within a year thanks to the agreement in principle concluded Sunday with the Federation of General Practitioners (FMOQ).
Posted at 3:11 p.m.
In interview with The Pressthe Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, specified that the agreement provided for the care of 500,000 Quebecers registered with the Guichet d’accès à un physician de famille (GAMF) by March 31, 2023.
No less than 990,395 orphan patients are currently registered on this list, his office later specified, a figure which has more than doubled in three years.
According to a missive from the FMOQ sent to its members on Sunday, their “individual” participation in the measures found in this agreement will however be “voluntary” and it does not provide for “no penalty or obligation”.
PHOTO DAVID BOILY, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Christian Dubé, Minister of Health and Social Services
No penalties, but goals
However, if Quebec does not provide penalties or additional money for family doctors beyond the sums they were to collect under an agreement concluded in 2018, the payment of the entire envelope now becomes conditional. to achieve certain targets.
” What I said [aux médecins, c’est] : we have a substantial envelope to be able to pay you if you achieve objectives. So there are no penalties, but there are objectives”, explains Christian Dubé.
We are not in the punishments, but in the general objectives.
Christian Dubé, Minister of Health and Social Services
Thus, if family doctors do not achieve this objective of reducing the GAMF list by 500,000 patients, they will have to give up on additional payments from Quebec which could amount to “several hundred million” dollars and which have not been spent due to the pandemic, according to Christian Dubé.
” [Nous] we sincerely believe that this agreement will not only improve access to care, for orphan patients among others, but that in the long term it will also allow family physicians to develop in a more stimulating, less cumbersome work environment where everything will no longer rest solely on their shoulders,” said FMOQ President Marc-André Amyot in his missive to his members.
Appointments faster
A second objective to be achieved for family physicians will be to offer short-term appointments, between 36 and 72 hours depending on the clinical condition, to the 6.5 million Quebecers who are already treated.
” [L’entente], it’s not fair to have more Quebecers who have a family doctor. Those who already have one must be served as soon as possible,” said Minister Dubé.
Family physicians will therefore have to plan time slots reserved for these last-minute appointments.
Quebec will be able to follow the evolution of this indicator using various tools and then use it during the next negotiation that it will undertake with the FMOQ next fall, indicates Christian Dubé.
Finally, the agreement in principle reached on Sunday with the FMOQ also lays the foundations for the deployment of front-line access windows (GAP), a new mechanism for directing patients to the right professional and to the right place.
FMOQ members will be informed of the details of the agreement during virtual sessions that will take place from May 9 to 19. Once these sessions are over, they will be called upon to approve the implementation of these new parameters within the framework of an electronic consultative vote.
Structuring measures
“This agreement in principle does not in any way indicate the end of the FMOQ’s opposition to certain counter-productive articles of Bill 11,” however warns Marc-André Amyot, president of the FMOQ.
The FMOQ fiercely opposes Bill 11, which aims to increase access to front-line services, and demanded that it be abandoned by the parliamentary committee in February. The union sees in it “an updated version of the distressing law 20” of former minister Gaétan Barrette. It is feared that Bill 11 will ultimately allow the imposition of coercive measures provided for in this law, measures that have never been applied, it must be remembered.
For his part, the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, underlined on Sunday “the fruit of several months of discussions, sometimes intense, but always with the shared vision that the status quo is no longer an option in terms of access” .