from ctvnews.ca
You’ve woken to a throat so sore you can barely swallow. Time to find a nearby walk-in clinic? Sure, it will probably be easier than trying to get in to see your family doctor. But if you live in Ontario, that walk-in clinic visit could hurt your doctor and put you at risk of being “de-rostered.”
Many don’t realize it, but when patients enrolled with a family doctor go to walk-in clinics, their GPs gets dinged. The docs receive a clawback on their “access bonus” -- a small fee Ontario doctors are paid for making themselves available to patients, even after hours.
Dr. Cathy Faulds, a family doctor in London, Ont. who served as president of the Ontario College of Family Physicians in 2014-15, says the way family doctors are paid in Ontario is complicated, but it is meant to encourage the creation of one-stop “medical homes” for patients to meet all their regular health care needs.
Most family doctors in Ontario now enrol patients onto a roster and then receive a lump annual sum for each patient. The system encourages doctors to offer full, continuous care to patients, rather than ask them to make separate appointments for each medical issue, the way they did in the old, fee-for-service model.
“Being rostered means a better doctor-patient relationship,” says Faulds. “...The model allows more time with the patient; it’s less of a bean-counting model.”
When a patient joins a doctor’s roster, that physician’s team commits to being available by phone and through extended office hours during evenings or weekends. In return, patients sign forms promising to call into the office when they have a sudden health issue so they see one of the doctors on the team.
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