Barrette: ‘Adoption of Bill 20 can wait’
Quebec will not invoke closure on controversial health care reform bill
First, Quebec family doctors got a reprieve from patient quotas and penalties, and now the specialists are getting a break.
Speaking to reporters in Quebec City Thursday, Quebec Health Minister Gaëtan Barrette said the province will not force closure on Bill 20, the controversial health care reform bill, before the National Assembly breaks for the summer.
“Actually, the adoption of Bill 20 can wait a while,” Barrette said.
A meeting has been scheduled for next week with the Fédération des médecins spécialistes du Québec, Barrette said, adding that he expects to sign a deal with the specialists on restructuring the way they provide care.
Barrette would not comment on the negotiations with the specialists, but conceded they asked for something similar to the deal reached with family doctors last month.
The whole point of the bill is to improve patient access, Barrette said.
“The specialists and the family doctors don’t want the application of Bill 20 at any price. Their objective is to avoid the law. And the only way to avoid it is to commit to delivering the merchandise,” Barrette said.
Nearly 24 per cent of Quebecers are on a waiting list or desperately searching for a family doctor. The original Bill 20 would have clawed back 30 per cent of family doctors’ salaries if they failed to meet quotas of 1,000 to 1,500 patients each. Under the deal struck with Barrette, the fines were suspended temporarily, but the onus to improve care is on the doctors who agreed to provide coverage to 85 per cent of the population by 2017 or else face the law’s sanctions.
The law also targets specialists with a quota system and fines. Quebec’s physicians have strongly objected to the law’s punitive measures.
Last month Diane Francoeur, head of the Fédération des médecins spécialistes du Québec, said her group will take legal action if Barrette attempts to impose penalties on doctors who fail to meet surgery quotas.
But on Thursday the group was sounding hopeful about reaching an agreement with Barrette on a modified Bill 20, with its quotas and penalties suspended until at least 2017.
With access to care nearly a done deal, Barrette told reporters that Bill 20 is more crucial to him for the economic savings that it will bring to the table by modifying procreation services, such as in vitro fertilization.
“It’s expected to save the province $48 million annually,” Barrette said. Recent amendments to the bill lifted restrictions to procreation services based on age. The original draft had imposed 42 as the cut off age for women seeking those services. Until the adoption of Bill 20, the current fertility treatment rules remain in force. Anyone who starts treatments before the law is adopted will be exempt from the new rules, a spokesperson for Barrette said on Thursday.
Asked why Quebec did not force closure on Bill 20 as it did with Bill 10, the health reform that abolished an entire level of administration, Barrette replied the latter was more urgent because of complicated structural changes that had to be put in place within a short time frame — before a new fiscal year started in April.
“It seemed to me simpler to make changes in the fiscal year,” he said.
Adopted shortly before midnight on Feb. 7, Bill 10 abolished the boards of individual health institutions, mainly hospitals and community health centres, and merged them into 28 regional boards.
It’s expected to save the government of Quebec $200 million per year.