"Patients should think for themselves"

[Guest Ian Wong]

Here's an interesting letter to the editor in today's Victoria Times Colonist by a retired family physician in Victoria. To put things into context, BC has undergone a significant amount of health care squabbles recently. Just a few months ago, the entire Nanaimo Emerg physicians group resigned en masse in an attempt to gain staffing parity with the emerg physicians in Victoria.

 

The BC Health Minister, Colin Hansen and the rest of the BC government have been having a huge PR battle with the BCMA, as another round of physician reimbursement negotiations are upcoming this year. Hansen has repeatedly stated that there is no new money in this year's budget for increasing any physician fees. The physicians in contrast are demanding fairly significant fee increases, in part to catch up for many previous years without significant reimbursement hikes.

 

Anyway, there is a lot of rhetoric going on in both sides of the dispute, and I would hazard a guess that the physicians are not winning this battle of public opinion at the moment (just my own personal opinion). With that said, the BC government has been putting out lots of ads stating that the average BC physician is pulling down $300,000 annually (which is really not true at all, see another thread in this forum for why not).

 

Anyway, this letter states some of the reasons why family physicians have become increasingly disenchanted with their work, and the author states that she has never grossed $100,000 during her practice career, which would obviously calculate out to a much smaller net income once office overhead, benefits, and vacation time are taken into account.

 

Ian

 

www.canada.com/victoria/timescolonist/letters/story.asp?id=BAF9B58B-6ACE-46A0-B68A-19028C03E76C

 

Patients should think for themselves

 

Ana M. Porzecanski

Times Colonist

 

Thursday, February 26, 2004

 

A recent letter stated doctors wish to be paid for overtime work. To my knowledge, we have never asked, nor expected, to be paid for overtime.

 

We have asked to be paid for time on-call, and for time spent actually looking after patients. The former was agreed to by the government only last year, and the latter we simply do not have. Each visit by a patient to a doctor has a set fee, whether the doctor spends five minutes or half an hour with him/her.

 

Many patients today delay going to a physician until they have several usually unrelated problems to bring up, and a 15-minute appointment just doesn't begin to cover the time required to deal with them all.

 

That is why many doctors ask patients to come in with only one problem at a time.

 

If we could charge MSP by unit of time, then we would not mind how long we spent with each individual patient.

 

That is what lawyers and many other professionals do, charge by the hour. Rest assured, I worked innumerable hours of "overtime," for which I never saw a penny!

 

And as a GP, I never grossed more than $100,000 a year, in 20-plus years of practice, until I retired in '92.

 

I had many patients who came in with long lists of problems, and I always addressed them all.

 

It would be a breath of fresh air if people did not swallow the government anti-doctor propaganda and did a little thinking for themselves.

 

And a little less envy and hating of professionals who DO have their patients' best interests at heart wouldn't hurt either.

 

Ana M. Porzecanski, MD

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