Orleans Weekly Journal
Published: Friday, May 2, 2008 Health care fee structure needs overhaul Question: When is a walk-in clinic not a walk-in clinic? Answer: When you actually do more than a walk-in clinic, save the health system oodles of money, serve your community with passion and professionalism and still end up on the wrong side of poor government policy. This, in a nutshell, is the challenging situation in which the Orléans Urgent Care Clinic (OUCC) finds itself. So, starting on June 1, the clinic will close its doors on Sundays and statutory holidays … just when it is needed the most by many families and most acutely by those who do not have access to a family doctor. OUCC executive director Marion Moritz notes that they have been whacked by a double whammy of an inability to recruit new physicians and the poaching (my words, not hers) of their docs to other facilities. And it’s not for their lack of effort. For doctors the world over, it is an employee’s market with potential employers such as public institutions, other clinics, and private facilities tripping over each other to offer incentives and other non-monetary benefits to lure professionals to their operations. On top of this competitive dynamic, the specific problem for the OUCC is that the Ontario government has not seen fit to change their fee structure to allow the doctors to actually bill for the type of work they do such as stitches, taking care of broken bones and other traditional non-urgent, non-surgical emergency room-type procedures. They just don’t see little Camille or Ahmed, listen to their chest cough and write a script; they deal with many issues and save patients hours of waiting at CHEO, Montfort and the Ottawa Hospital along with the extra hundreds of thousands of dollars these hospitals would otherwise incur. Our local Liberal MPP Phil McNeely has been working tirelessly on this issue and he continues to lobby provincial Health Minister George Smitherman and his officials, but his efforts still have not moved ministry officials. And for a community of 110,000, this is unacceptable. My family has used the services of the OUCC in the past from strep throat to walking pneumonia to a lovely dog bite during the 2004 election campaign. It has been there for us when we’ve needed it. Now it’s time for us, all of us, to do our part and let the government and the opposition know of our displeasure at this situation and demand that it be fixed, sooner rather than later. Please contact: Premier Dalton McGuinty (dmcguinty.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org and 613-736-9573); Health Minister George Smitherman (gsmitherman.mpp@liberal.ola.org and 416-327-4300); MPP Phil McNeely (pmcneely.mpp@liberal.ola.org and 613-834-8679); PC House Leader Bob Runciman (brunciman.mpp@pc.ola.org and 1-800-267-4408); and NDP Leader Howard Hampton (hhampton.qp@ndp.olg.org and 1-800-465-8501). Final point: Minister Smitherman had no issues with using the OUCC as a photo-op backdrop last fall for a diabetes funding announcement. His officials should have no issues with putting the proper fee-for-service billing plan in place for OUCC docs that serve our community. = = = = = Comments can be sent to Walter Robinson at orleansouttakes@transcontinental.ca. |