A doctor in Victoria who proposed charging patients $125 monthly fee for enhanced services like longer appointments and home visits has put the scheme on hold after it came under review by the Medical Services Commission.
Recently, a patient told the Times Colonist that her family Doctor, Dr Perpetua Nkechi Nwosu of Perpetual Health Centre located at 375-3066 Shelbourne St., told her in a letter that from November 1, she would no longer be enrolled on Medical Services Plan.
As private clinics cannot bill patients and bill the Medical Services Plan, Nwosu proposed billing patients directly for enhanced services (30-minute medical advisory appointments) and deploying the money into staff recruitment and overhead costs.
However, some patients were concerned that they would lose the services of Nwosu as their family doctor if they could not afford the proposed $125 monthly fee as the letter did not address what happens to patients who could not afford the fee.
According to the College of Physicians, if the block fee is offered for optional services, the doctor cannot tell the patient to pay for it before the patient can access another service, give the patient preferential treatment because the fee is paid, or terminate the relationship if the patient does not want to pay it.
Many months ago, B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix directed the Medical Services Commission, which supervises MSP, to look into private fee-based services charged by Telus Health MyCare to ensure patients who pay the fee don’t engage in queue-jumping, which isn’t allowed under the Canada Health Act.
Telus’s LifePlus package and other fee-based services have been criticized that they’re creating a two-tier health-care system. Also, the commission has been ordered to scrutinize other physicians in the province charging patients for similar packages that offer quick physician access and diagnostic tests.
After the recent announcement that temporary funding of $118 million to support doctors in family practice with increasing overhead costs, Dix was quizzed about the public release of the Medical Services Commission findings.
In the coming days, B.C. Doctors expect provision of application forms for family doctors as well as those in primary care clinics and walk-ins who want to access the temporary overhead-costs funding from the province, which is in the region of $25,000 per physician.
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