Tentative user-fees agreement reached

$45M deal must be approved by radiologists

Hours after taking out full-page ads in newspapers comparing Health Minister Gaétan Barrette to U.S. President Donald Trump, the province’s medical specialists reached an agreement-in-principle with the government on Friday over so-called accessory fees.

The $45-million deal, which must still be approved in a general assembly by Quebec’s radiologists, would mean that all ultrasounds would be covered under medicare. Previously, radiologists in private practice charged patients an average of $125 for the diagnostic scan.

A second part of the deal would ensure patients would no longer have to pay for a range of other services in private clinics, including vasectomies and the application of eye drops.

Despite the breakthrough in negotiations, the head of the Fédération des médecins spécialistes du Québec remained critical of Barrette’s approach in banning ultrasound fees at the end of December and most other accessory fees in January.

“There is still a lot of confusion in the (health) network for both patients and doctors,” Diane Francoeur said in a statement. “We will follow up on the details of the agreement ... to clarify expectations.”

“It is very important for the public to know that this agreement is not going to solve all the problems over accessory fees,” she added.

The government has produced a chart, available in French only, on the health department’s website, to inform the public about what specialists can no longer bill patients in private clinics.

That chart shows doctors can continue to charge patients for MRIs, cosmetic surgery and laser eye surgery, among a short list of exceptions.

The tentative deal with the specialists follows a similar one reached on Thursday with the province’s general practitioners.

There was an urgency to the negotiations as the ban on accessory fees took effect Thursday.

Barrette noted recently physicians in private practice collect $83 million a year in accessory fees (up from an estimate of $50 million he cited last year), but that the true cost of providing those services is about $13 million. Francoeur has disputed those figures.

Initially, Barrette proposed to legalize certain accessory fees, but reversed course under pressure from the federal government.