Couillard slams restriction on choice
Further burdening of cancer patients ‘unjust’
Liberal Leader Philippe Couillard said on Wednesday that he is opposed to the Parti Québécois’s controversial plan to curb access to cancer treatments at Montreal’s university hospitals for people living in off-island 450 area code regions.
When asked about the plan, which is set to go into effect April 1, Couillard said the Liberals would never “restrict freedom of choice of the doctor and the hospital.”
His position seems to echo growing concerns from hospital officials and patient advocacy groups that the plan — less than two weeks away from being implemented — has created a lot of confusion and should be shelved until more consultation is initiated and a better approach to the problem can be developed.
Last December, Quebec’s health ministry notified Montreal’s four university hospitals that it no longer wanted them to provide radiation therapy to cancer patients who live in the 450 regions.
Budgets would be cut at the university hospitals to help growing radiation centres at Charles LeMoyne Hospital on the South Shore and Cité de la Santé Hospital in Laval.
Government officials have insisted that patients still have the right to be treated at the hospital of their choice.
But radiation oncologists have painted a very different picture.
The new protocol means that a cancer patient’s postal code will be punched into a web portal to locate their nearest hospital, which would contact the patient for an appointment for radiation therapy. A patient who refuses would be able to choose the original hospital where they were treated and be put on a waiting list.
“You can go wherever you want, but if you happen to not go to your local hospital and you want to go to a university health centre, you will then be placed on a waiting list and will have to wait much longer,” said Barry Stein, president of the Colorectal Cancer Association of Canada. “Putting this kind of pressure on a cancer patient is a huge burden at their weakest time. It’s completely unjust.”
He said there is so much confusion about the implementation of the plan that it should at the very least be delayed.
“Nothing is clear, which is why we’re asking them to take a step back and take a better look at this before rushing into it on April 1,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Montreal Health and Social Services Agency was not available to comment on Tuesday or Wednesday. But the government’s insistence that patients can still choose any hospital they want has only added to the confusion and led people to complain about the government’s “doublespeak” on this issue.
That’s why Stein’s association, along with the teaching hospitals of McGill University and the Coalition priorité cancer au Québec, have asked the government to shelve the proposal to reorganize patient access based on residential postal codes until a solution can be found that meets the patients’ needs and preserves the right of choice.
Patients must have access to the right care at the right place at the right time, to ensure the highest quality and effectiveness of care, McGill’s teaching hospitals and faculty of medicine said in a statement last week.
Couillard said what the government has done recently is to provide people living off the island with facilities closer to home, if they choose to get treatment there. But freedom of choice, he said, is fundamental.
“It’s in the health care law. It should never be questioned,” Couillard said.
Patient rights advocate Paul Brunet said that he expects the protocol to be taken to court if the PQ goes ahead with it.
“Any kind of geographic restriction is probably illegal,” he said.
Stein said patients requiring radiation therapy probably have some sort of advanced cancer and, under those circumstances, would want to choose the best place in the province to get treatment.
“If you don’t have that right, then you’re compromising your chances, and it’s life or death,” he said. “There is so much confusion, not only at the administration level, but at the patient level. This is an unnecessary pressure on cancer patients.”