Right now there are more questions
than answers surrounding Dr Jacques Chaoulli's latest
venture, the Chaoulli Group ("Chaoulli's
back, now as private health broker," page 22). He
says that patients enrolled with the service will be
matched up with services they need either within or
outside the public system. CG will sign up doctors with
extra time on their hands to see patients outside the
public system after their regular work hours.
Dr Chaoulli is trying to shoehorn
the CG into a legal clause designed for hockey teams
and other workplace organizations that place extraordinary
health demands on their employees. Some object, saying
the clause wasn't meant for medically necessary services
(ie, those that are publicly insured), while others
maintain Dr Chaoulli's $40-a-year group isn't the kind
of organization the clause was made for.
And what's the point of it? The
most positive scenario would see the CG act as a case
manager to patients lost in the healthcare shuffle,
with some extra private care cards up its sleeve should
someone need services not available promptly enough
in the public system. If this is indeed the case, Minister
Couillard should contract CG for the Quebec system as
a whole and deal with the dearth of case managers (aka
family practitioners) and wait lists all at once.
But it's not that simple. The CG
business plan rests on the assumption it will be able
to find enough physicians who want to spend their 'spare'
time seeing patients privately. If they're able to find
them, then Quebec will know it has much more work to
do in creating a productive working environment for
its physicians in the public system. — Susan
Usher, Health Policy Editor
|
