The death and rebirth of Family Practice in Alberta

Well, this is my first blog.

I am essentially running two independent medical practices: a full-service Family Medicine Practice, and an Office Surgery Practice.

The Family Medicine Practice is a smoothly running machine.  We take great care of a lot of folks and we're happy to treat these ones.  It's a closed practice - meaning that we pretty much don't take any new patients (unless Paige feels sorry for one).

But I am slowly getting abandoned; not by patients or population - but by colleagues!  There appears to be fewer Family Doctors to go around.  I used to be able to bounce stuff off my partner, or walk around the corner in my Medical Building and talk to a colleague about a case.

But now, there a very few Family Docs around to chat with - and those that are still in practice are literally drowning professionally in responsibilities and demands!  In fact, almost half of the referrals I receive lately for surgical consultations are from Family Physicians that are no longer in practice by the time I get the consultation letter written after the surgical procedure is done!

So, I have decided that enough is enough and that it is time to fix Family Medicine!

Government has been short sighted and should be blamed for poor planning - fair enough.  The fact that they claim that there is not enough money in the budget to pay the Physicians - while voting themselves in excess of 30% pay raises looks pretty bad to the tax-paying public.

But the secret to fixing Family Medicine is to decrease the dependence of Family Medicine on Insured Medical Services that are tied to the impossibly outdated Canada Health Act.

This means charging patients for uninsured services that have been traditionally provided to patients free of charge....what might these sorts of services be, you might ask?  The answer is pretty much anything that my staff does for patients other than booking an appointment to see me.  See My Website and click on "Uninsured Services" for an example of services that are provided but not paid for by the Alberta Health Care Insurance Plan.