Tomorrow, final year medical students across the country (including myself) will login to the CaRMs website and learn our fates for the next 2-5 years. The ways in which residency positions are assigned were well discussed by healthydebate. The factors that contribute to medical student choice of discipline and location are widely varied and include …
“What’s the harm in taking something small? It’s just a pen. It’s only lunch. It was just one weekend at the bed & breakfast with my partner. And I learned about a topic that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise. Plus I got some samples in return! It won’t affect my prescribing habits…” These are …
Each year thousands of medical students across Canada apply for, and are matched to, residency positions in a variety of medical specialties. The allocation of residency training positions among the various specialties is largely decided by academic doctors involved with medical education. Some experts believe that health system decision makers should exert greater influence over …
Improving access to primary care has been a key priority of the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care for the past decade. The number of Ontarians who have a regular family doctor has increased dramatically. However, patients who are chronically ill continue to have problems accessing primary care. More family doctors and more rostered …
The Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) does not cover all health services that can be provided by a doctor. These “uninsured” services include telephone renewal of prescriptions, writing sick notes for work or school and transferring medical records. Doctors can offer patients the option of paying for a set of uninsured services with a single …
Increasing access to primary care providers, such as family doctors or nurse practitioners, has been a government priority. Better access to primary care is also associated with improved population health. Although the percentage of Ontarians with a regular primary care provider has increased in recent years, fewer than half can see their primary care provider …
In the run up to the Ontario election, the Liberal party has promised $60 million to support physician house calls. The number of doctors who make house calls has declined markedly over the past fifty years, and only a small proportion of Ontario family doctors currently provide ongoing care to patients in their homes. What …
Most of Ontario’s doctors bill the Ontario Health Insurance Plan for their services on a “fee for service” basis. The amount doctors are paid for each service is established through negotiations between the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and the Ontario Medical Association. Although fees are reviewed every few years, there is disagreement about …
Over the last fifty years, doctors have been making fewer and fewer house calls. There is little doubt that patients value physician house calls, particularly from a doctor with whom they have an ongoing relationship. Lack of appropriate training and mentors, financial disincentives, and the changing culture of family medicine are all barriers to increasing …
The Centre for Innovation in Complex Care hosted a debate on April 8, 2011 focused on the resolution that “the single most important step in improving hospital quality is having physicians paid and employed by hospitals.” Healthydebate.ca covered this issue on April 6, with a story on How Hospital Doctors Be Paid? At the debate, …
Doctors are a significant portion of the costs for the health care system. In 2009, almost a quarter of Ontario’s health care budget was spent on paying doctors. Most doctors who work in hospitals are not paid by the hospital directly, but by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan, which pays doctors for each procedure and clinical service. …