Posted on 02/11/2008 8:39:25 PM PST by FormerACLUmember
WHEN Sue MacKinnon heard a doctor at a St. James clinic was accepting new patients, she jumped at the chance to find a physician close to home.
MacKinnon went to the clinic and filled out a form detailing her medical history, including her Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol and chronic sleep disorder.
Weeks later, MacKinnon found out she didn't make the cut -- the physician rejected her as a patient because of her health troubles.
"I got a letter saying that I had too many medical problems," said MacKinnon, 51.
"I was too complicated to take."
According to Manitoba Health, 29 doctors were accepting new patients in Winnipeg as of last Wednesday -- 10 of whom have certain restrictions on who they will accept as patients.
Dr. Bill Pope, registrar of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba, said most patients don't realize family physicians can accept or refuse a patient based on their current patient load and knowledge of certain health problems.
For example, a family doctor with an interest in geriatrics may take a lot of elderly patients with chronic conditions -- like a subspecialty. However, if the same family doctor is accepting new patients, she may exclude geriatric patients. Pope said family doctors still must have a mix of patients and taking on too many geriatric patients or patients with chronic health conditions could be overly time-consuming because of the complexity of certain diseases.
"Firstly, physicians have always had the opportunity to choose whether to have a relationship with a patient or not," Pope said.
"There are many physicians, actually, who don't see children or women who might be pregnant because they basically don't have that area of practice enough to remain competent in it."
Doctors cannot discriminate against a patient based on race, gender, or anything outlined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Pope said the idea is for physicians to acknowledge areas of medicine they know well and other areas of practice they may be less competent in.
However, he said, it does make it more complicated for people to find a family doctor.
"It does make it more complex."
Dr. Darcy Johnson, president of the Manitoba Medical Association, said part of the problem is that the way doctors bill the province for their time doesn't accurately reflect all the work they do -- one of the factors, he said, that has led to the declining interest in family medicine.
Aside from being overrun with older patients with complex, chronic diseases, Johnson said administrative paperwork and telephone medical advice eat up time a physician could be spending with a patient. Doctors are not reimbursed for dispensing medical advice over the phone, talking to pharmacists about prescription orders or discussing the health of a patient with hospital staff.
Johnson, a family physician of 25 years, said doctors have a limited amount of time and many new medical graduates do not want such an intensive medical practice.
"You've got an aging population, people with multiple conditions, an epidemic of diabetes, the issues of patients in hospital, the fact we're so short of family doctors," Johnson said. "The heavy lifters of the health-care system are overwhelmed."
MacKinnon, a Grade 3 teacher, said she didn't realize physicians can pick and choose their patients based on certain criteria and is frustrated some physicians don't have enough time to deal with a patient with a multitude of conditions.
Although she has since found a different family doctor, MacKinnon said her new doctor told her she has to make a separate appointment for each of her health woes since he doesn't have enough time to address them all at once.
"You have to be your own advocate because if you're not, you won't get anywhere in the medical system," MacKinnon said. "It's too overloaded."
One of the dirty little secrets of Canadian health care is that doctors avoid really sick people like the plague.
Our excellent family doc got fed up with the low fees he was being paid by many of those he saw under the New Jersey all but socialized medical system for the poor and took off for North Carolina last year, abandoning a practice his physician father had started to build forty years ago - luckily, a couple of other docs have stepped in to take over his patients, but who knows how long they’ll stay around........
Wow.... just, wow.
If you think healthcare is expensive now, just wait until Hillary makes it “Free.”
Cute dogs.
That’s how I had it described in a WSJ editorial a decade ago.
The Iron Triangle of declining Medicaid/Medicare reimbursements. The hassle and red tape of private insurers/HMO’s and the malpractice insurance fees (bad to worse depending on the specialty) has been gradually turning the best and the brightest away from medicine.
Then there is this little matter of years spent in training plus the tens of thousands of $ in student loans.
Then, in the nineties, the so-called “ER” factor, in which TV dramas made the profession look insanely stressful and dangerous (not withstanding the fictional nookie) and a seeming guarantee of a life of penury.
There you are! I missed your comments!
The upside of Socialized Medicine.....A ten month wait for an abortion....
They are just figuring out there is an aging population?? Then they need to go into another line of work. I don’t want a discriminatory doctor who will tell you to go you know what.
“One of the dirty little secrets of Canadian health care is that doctors avoid really sick people like the plague.”
What is the Point of being a doctor if you are not going to work on sick people??
Actually abortions are fast in socialized systems. The more babies you kill, the less expense later on. Besides abortion is THE central value of the Democrat Party; It is the cherished center of their existence.
1. Care is denied or delayed indefinitely all the time.
2. You can’t sue the Government when something goes wrong.
Sorry, but that is the only type of doctor who can survive in socialized care. (Coming in 6 months to US Medicare after another scheduled massive fee reduction.)
There just are not enough hours in the day to survive financially if you waste your time on uncompensated really sick people with no extra reimbursement. You can see 10 "worried well" in the same time as on a single very ill patient, and get paid 10 times as much for the same exact time spent. In other words, you don't get paid any extra for the time-wasting complex case.
So the Canadian (and American) doctors to refuse see any really sick, complex cases.
Before you blame it all on the John Edwards trial lawyers, remember often hospitals pass on bad doctors with out warning that they are bad. Hospitals can't warn because of a lawsuit by the doctor, but the next hospital down the line gets sued. This happened here in Putnam County, West Virginia. It was simply a case of a bad doctor that no one investigated. What is worse, after this doctor left West Virginia, he legally changed his name and went into medicine.
Some of the Doctors working in England’s national health service are active bloggers, and several are reporting they’ve been seeing a sudden flood of previously healthy women who announce that they’re feeling depressed and want a psychiatric referral. It seems the NHS has started doing ‘free’ breast augmentation surgery for women who feel they’ll be relegated to lives of misery without bigger ta-ta’s.
In a situation where the provision of medical care is subject to political pressures, it’s not hard to envision the same thing happening here. Picture the various pressure groups and their Congressional lackeys decrying those ‘evil men who are trying to deny women their chance at happiness’.
Oh yeah... two years after Hillary Care got underway, we’d be looking at waiting lists for hip surgery, but a fast track for boob implants, all on the taxpayer’s dime.
You die like a dog if you get cancer in the UK, with one of the worst cancer survival rates in Europe.
But the NHS pays for hymen reconstruction for all the muslim babes, who want to be “virgins” on their wedding nights. If not, they get honor-killing murdered. Socialized medical care is, as you pointed out, very PC.
Sounds exactly like how my practice is. I can not see everyone who wants to be seen. I have quit OB. And I do turn down chronic pain patients cause unfortunately 90% are abusig thier drugs and are just trouble waiting to happen. I have enough of my own without taking on specifically just chronic pain patients. I am sure I will at some point have to not take new patients. If everyone gets “free” care it will really be a mess. The Medicaid children are brought to the office sometimes just because their sibling was coming so might as well have Susie looked at also. Just in case.......
He was a helluva doctor. We all miss him.
Well, they should have thought about that.
This is not limited to Canada. Hubby decided he wanted a doctor’s appointment, but we haven’t needed a physician since we moved here. So hubby asked me to find him a doctor. How do you find a doctor when you know nothing about doctors in your new home town??? One of our children had an appointment with our pediatrician (I picked her randomly out of our HMOs list of peds. Best ped in town!), so I asked her to recommend a GP. She said, “He may not have any openings, but any of the doctors at that practice will be good.” I called. The receptionist said, “All of our doctors are full, but if you leave your husband’s name and reason for his appointment AND the referring physician’s name, then the doctor will get back with you within three days.” Sure enough, the doctor’s office called and said the doctor would take hubby. I’m certain it had everything to do with the referring physician. But if we had just randomly called the particular GP, hubby would have been turned down.
Roughly 15 years ago I read a guest column by none other than Joseph Califano in which he claimed that the biggest problem in the cost of health care is the high price of malpractice insurance, which in turn is the result of the trial lawyers’ pursuit of “jackpot justice” lawsuits. (Yeah, THAT Joe Califano, the architect of Johnson’s “Great Society”, and a former HEW secretary under Carter.)
The silence which greeted that column was deafening.
Idealism is rapidly and completely destroyed by socialism. Think Post Office and IRS. The public is completely screwed, as a result.
A broken clock is correct twice every day.
Pray for our country.
bump
Wow!! So if you get paid per patient, rather than per treatment--you lose money with sicker patients. LOL!
West Virginia is an excellent source of physicians—for Kentucky recruiters! Your state is one of the worst for lawyers beating up on doctors.
West Virginia is a nightmare state for doctors: crooked layers run the statehouse, huge welfare population, huge oxycontin addicted populace, on crystal meth when they can’t get their “pain meds,” nobody to refer tough cases to fro second opinions, 2nd fattest state in the union, no specialists, everybody on Medicaid and Medicare, etc. etc.
It is the democrat party’s idea of heaven.
bttt
I don’t need you or any doctor. I got my cayenne pepper. Cures everything from brain tumors to hemmoroids. LOL
All kidding aside, people need to take charge of their own health. Go online and find a dozen cures for everything. Hit and miss at best, still, it’s better than wasting your money on such a bottomless pit.
Find no cure for what ails ya? Make your peace with the Lord and go to a better place
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