Clinics are sending letters to their patients to inform them that they will be without a family doctor as of January 1er June due to the end of the agreement with the government on accessibility for orphan patients.
“Family doctors are aware that the access offered to the orphan population responded to a real and pressing need. Without this agreement, we cannot maintain the offer since the resources dedicated to this access cannot be maintained in their functions,” for example wrote the Clinique Médicale de la Vallée, located in Saint-Raymond, in a letter sent to his patients.
“Rest assured that all the doctors at the clinic are sorry not to be able to offer you an alternative and regret not being able to see you,” we read in the message signed by the medical clinic, and that The duty was able to consult. The letter then invites patients to contact their MPs.
At the general council of the Coalition Avenir Québec on Saturday, the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, declared in front of an audience of activists that he will “never accept that we take the population hostage for negotiations”.
In a press scrum, the minister suggested that sending letters was a concerted initiative on the part of the Federation of General Practitioners of Quebec (FMOQ). “All letters are the same: an FMOQ header, an AMOQ header [Association des Médecins Omnipraticiens de Québec]…I find it unfortunate that the union leadership is doing this. Not sure the doctors are comfortable with that,” he complained.
The end of an agreement
A new standoff has begun between the minister and the doctors’ union in recent weeks due to the end, on May 31, of the agreement on accessibility. This enabled the registration of 910,000 patients with groups of family doctors.
For each collective registration, family medicine groups (GMF) received $120. Such registration assigns a patient to a GMF, and not to a particular doctor. According to data revealed by Quebec in mid-April, half of the patients registered with a GMF have not obtained a medical appointment in the last two years. The Minister of Health did not provide an update on this data on Saturday.
Mr. Dubé assured Saturday that he had “never said” that he did not want to renew the agreement with the doctors. “After 18 months, it was planned that we would end the agreement, when there was no more money, that we would take stock and look: are there things to improve? Do you really think we are going to remove a service [qui a permis à] 900,000 Quebecers know where to call? To ask the question is to answer it,” he said.
The Prime Minister, François Legault, for his part said he expected difficult negotiations. “The next few weeks are going to be very hard, but we must not give up like other governments,” he said.
More details will follow.