Doctors, PQ clash over cancer care

Coalition priorité cancer au Québec denounces funding drop as endangering ‘continuity of care’

The Parti Québécois confirmed it will cut cancer care funding at Montreal’s university hospitals, saying patients numbers are down and off-island people want to be treated closer to home. Doctors and patients’ groups disagree and say the cuts could be dangerous.

The Parti Québécois government will cut funding in cancer care at Montreal’s university hospitals “over the course of the next several years,” Health Minister Réjean Hébert said Wednesday.

Hébert was responding to a Gazette article that the government has ordered the Jewish General and other Montreal hospitals to stop treating off-island cancer patients. The new rules are to take effect on April 1.

Hébert claimed that the volume of cancer patients at the Jewish General has decreased, and therefore, its budget must be lowered to reflect this “reality.”

However, Dr. Joseph Portnoy, director of professional services at the Jewish General, suggested that the opposite is true in a Jan. 24 memo to staff, saying the Côte-des-Neiges hospital “is currently treating volumes of patients beyond our capacity, and (we) do not have the resources to continue in this manner.”

Hébert said Laval and the South Shore have excellent cancer centres and patients want to be treated close to home.

“We can’t continue to finance radiotherapy at the Jewish that they are not doing,” he added.

“People prefer to be treated as close as possible to their homes, and we now have cancer centres of very good quality in Laval and at Charles LeMoyne (Hospital on the South Shore), which will reduce the pressure on the hospitals on the island of Montreal. This is good news, but we have to make budget adjustments.

“There is a directive informing institutions on the island of Montreal that we will adjust their budgets over the course of the next few years to take into account their volume.”

Dr. Té Vuong, director of radiation oncology at the Jewish General, estimated that her hospital treats about 1,600 patients a year in radiation oncology, of which 500 come from the 450 area code of the South Shore and Laval. Vuong’s figures contradict Hébert’s assertion that the Jewish General is being funded to provide radiotherapy to 450-code patients that don’t exist.

The Coalition priorité cancer au Québec has denounced the PQ’s funding cuts as dangerous and could result in a loss in “continuity of care.” The Coalition estimates that the cuts will mean that the Jewish General will treat about 650 fewer cancer patients a year.

The McGill University Health Centre is projected to treat more than 200 fewer cancer patients, according to the Coalition. By comparison, there will be a small drop in cancer patients at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital and a slight increase at the Centre hospitalier de l’université de Montréal.

Barry Stein, president of the Canadian Colorectal Cancer Association, said there is a good reason that many off-island patients seek treatment at the Jewish General despite the availability of cancer care close to home.

“Everybody agrees that patients would like to be treated near their homes, but the fact of the matter is that when you have cancer, particularly advanced cancer that requires a certain expertise, you have to come to the island of Montreal where you can get that specialized treatment,” Stein said, alluding to the Jewish General’s Segal Cancer Centre.

Hébert also acknowledged the Jewish General’s reputation in cancer care.

“The Jewish has a deficit of $8 million and, therefore, the Jewish must stick to its mandate of offering services to patients on the island of Montreal and to offer ultra-specialized care in cancer,” he said.

Hébert added that if cancer patients from St-Lambert want to be treated in Montreal, they have the “free choice.” Although that may be so, doctors at Montreal hospitals have been told by the government to turn away such patients.

Jewish General and MUHC officials were to meet Wednesday night with the Montreal Health and Social Services Agency to discuss the cuts.