This week, the B.C. government announced a new fee structure with doctors aimed to stop the bleeding of family physicians out of the health-care system.
Of the many woes in health care, the inability to attract and retain family doctors has grown to crisis proportions.
Patients need family doctors to navigate health problems both simple and complex. They need them for referrals to specialists, to order diagnostic tests and to write prescriptions.
Family doctors are both the fundamental building block of health care and the point where most people interact with that system.
The reasons doctors have been quitting or just not signing up for family practice are many.
Some – like lower pay compared to hospitalists, increased overhead costs and complex care of an aging population – will hopefully be addressed by the new deal announced this week.
But the fix won’t be instant, and it won’t be a panacea for the shortage.
The deal also doesn’t fundamentally change the payment model for family doctors, which has physicians operating clinics as small businesses. That may or may not make sense in future.
Given the increases recently negotiated with other public sector workers, and the need for family doctors, it would be difficult for the government not to offer doctors a substantial improvement.
We won’t know for some time if the new deal with doctors has treated the affliction.
But given the numbers of desperate people looking for doctors and the knock-on effects of them not having one, the NDP is clearly hoping this infusion of cash can get a pulse back in our primary health-care system.
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