Nova Scotia doctors will not be required to disclose to
government their fees for services rendered, the Nova
Scotia Court of Appeal ruled on May 12.
In April, members of Doctors Nova
Scotia appealed an earlier Supreme Court of Nova Scotia
decision that ordered all physicians in the province
to hand over any MSI fee-for-service billing records,
with their names attached.
Joanna Redden of the NDP made the
request in July 2004, claiming the information was pertinent
to helping solve the province's healthcare crisis. The
doctors had no problem providing the financial information
but said the inclusion of the physicians' names was
a gross invasion of privacy.
Justices Joel Fichaud, Thomas Cromwell
and Linda Oland, who heard the appeal on April 5, agreed.
"The disclosure of the names of individual physicians
would be an unreasonable invasion of the physician's
privacy," the decision states.
Dave Wilson, the New Democrats'
health critic, said they are obviously unhappy with
the decision, but they accept it and don't plan to appeal.
"We respect the courts and their judgement," he said.
"We've heard from many residents
and rural physicians over the years on how hard it was
to maintain a practice, the overhead costs and the expense
of running a practice," Mr Wilson added. "That's one
of the reasons we were searching for that information,
to see if we could look at it and ensure that government
is treating rural doctors fairly."
But the president of Doctors Nova
Scotia said he has much different feelings on the subject.
Dr Romesh Shukla said he's thrilled with the decision
because he thinks releasing such information would make
it harder to keep doctors — especially young ones
— in the province. "We didn't believe for a moment
that this would lead to any improvement in health services
for Nova Scotians."
Republished
with permission from
The Halifax Herald Limited
|
