CanAm’s perspective:
CanAm couldn’t agree more with Les Leyne’s article (see below). Like BC, Nova Scotia is facing the same dilemma. CanAm has held meetings with the senior health bureaucrats and the astounding attitude is that Nova Scotia has too many doctors.
We assume this is based on statistical data from sources such as CIHI. But what these statistics don’t show is that present-day physicians — particularly Family Physicians — don’t see the volume of patients and don’t work the full work week as physicians in years past.
Nova Scotia may have the highest percentage of physicians-to-population ratio in the country, but we also have one of the largest — if not the highest — elderly patient and physician populations.
We also need to consider the number of retired physicians who maintain a licence, physicians who maintain a Nova Scotia licence but work full-time in another province, the number of part-time physicians, the volume of patients seen per physician, and the years of services a physician delivers.
Please have a look at Les Leyne’s article, and weigh in with your feedback …
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Exerpt from Les Leyne’s article Sifting the B.C. numbers: Is there a doctor shortage or what?
Doctor shortage? What doctor shortage? There were 831 more doctors billing the Medical Services Plan under the general practitioner category last year than there were 10 years ago. That’s a 17 per cent increase.
Across all specialties, there are 1,848 more doctors billing for services than there were 10 years ago, a 22 per cent increase.
You’d think that kind of apparent growth rate in an occupation would be enough to handle population
increases and the higher patient loads that arise from the aging population.
But it isn’t. The doctor shortage is a fact of life across B.C.
Buried in the mass of data churned out by the Health Ministry is a report that either sheds more light on or confounds the situation, depending on perspective. It was not widely shared, but the MSP Physician Resource Report looks at a decade’s worth of billings by B.C. doctors.
The statistics are complicated and wide open to interpretation. But the numbers suggest doctors by and large are seeing patients for fewer days a year than they once did, and the average number of patients they’re seeing has dropped.
