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Western Quebec’s health authority says it is concerned that 15,000 people there are in the process of losing their family doctor. However, fewer doctors are leaving and fewer patients are affected than previously thought.
As of mid-December, when the Coalition Avenir Québec backed down and overhauled its controversial Bill 2, the group representing western Quebec’s family doctors said 41 of them were leaving.
Health authority CISSSO told Radio-Canada Monday that 24 family doctors and nine specialists have finalized their departures since Bill 2 was passed at the end of October.
That number of specialist departures is considered normal, CISSSO said, but it estimated about 20 of the 24 departing family doctors are leaving because of Bill 2.
That number of patients expected to lose a family doctor is down from nearly 37,000 in early December to about 15,000, or nearly one in every 25 people. At the time Bill 2 was passed, about 55,300 people there already didn’t have access to a family doctor or family health group.
“The whole system is affected. These doctors were working all over,” said Dr. Marcel Guilbault in French about the doctor departures. He’s medical director of the Département territorial de médecine familiale, that area’s family doctor group.
“It’s really a puzzle to replace these people.”
The office of Health Minister Sonia Bélanger declined to comment on the Outaouais numbers when asked by Radio-Canada and referred questions to Santé Québec, which did not answer questions by deadline.
Long-running disagreement
The original version of Bill 2 would have come into effect Jan. 1 this year, tying doctors’ pay to performance targets to entice them to take on more patients during a family doctor shortage.
It followed Bill 106 last May, which followed stalled negotiations with doctors and specialists going back to 2023.
Bill 2 also introduced heavy fines for doctors withholding some kinds of training in protest of Bill 106.
Doctors resisting the changes said it would incentivize a dangerous focus on quantity of care rather than quality.
Hundreds of doctors indicated they were interested in leaving the province, which had a particular effect on western Quebec and its close ties to eastern Ontario.
The CAQ government changed course in December and scrapped penalties for missing performance targets and failing to follow changes. It removed an obligation for family doctor groups to take on the province’s estimated 1.2 million orphaned patients by January 2027.
Health Minister Christian Dubé cited difficult negotiations with the unions representing doctors as a reason for resigning the week after those changes. Premier François Legault announced his intention to step down last month.
After all the turmoil, the retooled Bill 2 is scheduled to take effect on Feb. 28.
The province and family doctor group FMOQ have also started a committee to find family health care for 500,000 Quebecers.
Guilbeault said family health teams need more money if they’re going to take on more patients given these departures.
Jean Pigeon, the spokesperson for SOS Outaouais and its work to improve the region’s health care, said this needs to happen with an eye toward fixing long-lasting local health underfunding.
