The annual premium amount offered to family physicians for each patient registered through Quebec’s guichet d’accès à la première ligne (GAP) has dropped by $20 to $100 per patient annually.
Fédération des médecins omnipraticiens du Québec (FMOQ) president Dr. Marc-André Amyot presented the details of the agreement reached the previous day with the Quebec government to his members at noon on Friday.
Another change to the agreement is that the premium will no longer be paid in full as soon as the appointment becomes available. An initial amount of $50 will be allocated when a time slot is open and the other $50 at the time of the appointment.
Both parties seem satisfied with the agreement reached.
Health Minister Christian Dubé stressed on Thursday that the bridge agreement for GAP will “preserve certain important principles, such as collective enrolment.”
Since 2022, an annual premium of $120 had been paid for each patient enrolled in a family medicine group (FMG) via the GAP. The aim was for FMGs to take on patients who had no family doctor.
Amyot repeatedly argued that the premium is being used to hire staff and rent space to accommodate more patients.
“Physicians have reorganized their practices,” he argued on Thursday before the agreement with Quebec City was announced.
The agreement expired on May 31, resulting in fewer appointments with a doctor available on the GAP. At one point, the number of appointments available via the GAP had dropped from 17,604 in the week of May 18 to 1,133 for the week of June 29.
In a press scrum on Thursday, Amyot hinted that the number of appointments offered via the GAP should increase in comparison with the decline observed since the end of the agreement. However, this will not return to “the previous state of GAP.”
He explained that some doctors who decided to postpone retirement in order to offer GAP services may now have retired in the context of uncertainty as to whether the agreement would be renewed.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on June 14, 2024.
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