Breaking News—According to OHIP, Ontario’s Doctors are working “Too Hard”
This week, many physicians across Ontario received letters from the Ministry of Health that they are working too hard. The letters flagged them for working too many days or seeing too many patients. Not for errors or wrongdoing, but simply for showing up.
To quote Dr. Adam Stewart, “You can’t make this stuff up" (Dr. Stewart's video). What does this translate to? Doctors are literally being flagged for working too much. They are being told that working late, working evenings, and working weekends, could be seen as suspicious rather than what it actually is—physicians sacrificing their time with family and friends to ensure patients get the care they need.
Just this week, more than 140 doctors were at Queen’s Park, advocating for every Ontarian to have a family physician and to increase access to specialist services across the province. To have the government send letters chastising doctors for stepping up to the plate is an affront to their tireless efforts.
A physician's job is not done when they leave a clinic or hospital. They are responsible for their patients at all times. We work evenings, we work weekends, we work overnight depending on our specialty. And we do this because people do not get sick on a nine to five schedule. Let us use family medicine as an example.
The government committed $3.4 billion to connect 2.5 million Ontarians to primary care, and since then 511,000 people have been attached. Ontario didn’t suddenly gain a wave of new doctors. Family doctors and their teams stepped up and took on more patients and more work.
To now send letters implying that these physicians should work less is not only insulting to our work as doctors but also directly contradicts the government’s goals for patient attachment. If physicians will be flagged as “suspicious billers” if they work harder, why would they agree to take on more patients?
People still get diagnosed with cancer and diabetes over the weekend, and we are responsible for ensuring that those results are reviewed and communicated to our patients in a timely manner. These letters from the government are an affront to our profession. And it begs the question why is the government contradicting itself?
Because I would think a government would celebrate a physician working six to seven days out of the week in order to ensure that patient care is maintained. I would think that the government would say thank you for your sacrifice to the health care workers who are making themselves available most days of the year.
Specialists also received these letters, despite the news this week that 1 in 5 Ontarians are waiting more than 6 months for specialist appointments. Doctors are stepping up—we have communities that don't have enough physicians. We have communities where doctors can be on call on average every other day. This is not suspicious. This is reality. If doctors pull back, patients have nowhere to go.
This has been very disappointing. We expect better from our government. If Ontario wants shorter waits, the government should support the doctors working hardest, not investigate them.
Comments