Patients’ issue made worse

The airing of dirty linen on the front page of The Guardian certainly attracts attention especially when it involves a doctor and Health P.E.I.

In Crapaud, Dr. Joey Giordani decided the solution to his problem of badly behaving patients would be to randomly remove 250-500 individuals from his panel of 2,000 patients. This method was chosen to avoid possible legal action by the 100 or so alleged offenders for discrimination on the basis of mental health issues.

Without claiming any knowledge of medicine or expertise in health care management, the wrongheadedness on the part of the physician and the blunder of Health P.E.I. is obvious.

The casting off of a huge number of patients by Dr. Giordani through the lottery method of problem solving still leaves a large number of bad-behavers in his care. At the same time hundreds of others, through no fault of their own, are left without a family physician. Surely this physician recognizes that mental and physical health are integral.

It has been reported that retiring family doctors are being replaced by more than one doctor to keep patients panels at about 1,200-1,500. What, then, happened in this condoned purchase of a practice of 2,000 in Crapaud? There appears to have been no advanced planning by Health P.E.I. for support of Dr. Giordani in his ambitious undertaking.

The situation in Crapaud is indicative of mismanagement at senior levels of Health P.E.I. Cleanup of this mess would also make a good story.

Don Humphrey,

Souris