The Ministry of Health announced two measures on Tuesday aimed at reducing paperwork for GPs, freeing up 138,000 appointment slots.
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“It's a step in the right direction, but it's a drop in the bucket,” says general practitioner and owner of Clinique La Cité Mâ©dicale in Montreal, Doctor Samer Daher.
In an interview on the program “Le Bilan”, Doctor Daher said that he spends between six and eight hours a week completing these documents; a job that he very often brings home to do on Saturdays.
The doctor admits that this bureaucratic burden is “annoying” and that more of it needs to be abolished to make the profession more attractive.
“I would rather sit down and spend 15, 20, 30, 40 minutes with a patient than sit in front of a paper and try to figure out what the insurer wants,” he claims.
This type of documentation is often requested by private insurers, but also by government bodies such as the Commission on Standards, Equity, Health and Safety at Work (CNESST).
Doctor Daher explains that several patients who have had an accident at work need to see the doctor every three to four weeks. Therefore, if they want to receive CNESST benefits, they must submit a medical certificate at the required intervals.
“This is one of the errors of the system,” complains the general practitioner.
The same applies to private insurers, who require a detailed medical report before granting reimbursement to their patients.
“I’m not here to make an assessment. “As a treating doctor, I am there to try to help the patient,” denounces the doctor.
“I can not stand it anymore.”
The owner of Clinique La Cité Médicale in Montreal claims that the measures could help the health system a little, but in his case it is already too late.
“I can’t take it anymore,” he admits. “I’m hanging up my stethoscope.”
“I worked about 70 hours a week for 30 years and this is the end for me,” he says.
However, in his opinion, it is not he who is quitting the profession.
“I feel like I’m being pushed out of the healthcare system,” he emphasizes.
“We have a chronic shortage of staff,” he claims. We've been warning for 21 to 22 years that we're going to hit a wall. Today we beat him.”
According to him, the government must be able to sell healthcare careers to the next generations.
Doctor Daher believes: “If we don’t have this magic wand to fill more positions in general practice, we need to manage to make this practice attractive.”
“We want more general practitioners on site. We want more people, we want more nurses, we want to work as a team,” he asks.
***Watch the interview with Doctor Samer Daher in the video above***