The bridging agreement which was concluded Thursday evening between the government and the Federation of General Practitioners of Quebec (FMOQ) stipulates that the bonus offered to doctors who will take patients via the front line access window (GAP) will increase from $120 to $100, according to new information released Friday.
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Information on this bridging agreement is trickling out; the FMOQ clarified Thursday that it wanted to inform its 10,000 members before disclosing its entire content.
Since the GAP expired at the end of May, the number of appointments with a family doctor offered to orphan patients has dropped drastically, from around 18,000 in mid-May to nearly 4,000. in June.
Despite yesterday’s agreement, the situation could take months before returning to normal, informed the president of the FMOQ, Dr Marc-André Amyot.
“You have to understand. The doctors were not at home twiddling their thumbs,” Dr. Amyot said Thursday evening on the show Le Bilan.
“The doctors, when they learned that the agreement was ending, that there were negotiations and that it did not seem to be successful, I have doctors from Ontario who had come to lend a hand in Outaouais who returned in Ontario and who took on guards and activities,” he explained.
He added that some doctors who work in emergencies had also raised their hands to offer appointments via the GAP, but “seeing that the agreement was not extended, these doctors took precautions. ’emergency and hospitalization’.
However, this bridging agreement is not permanent.
It is an agreement between the government and the FMOQ before the two parties agree on a framework agreement called the framework regulation.
However, the time to negotiate this bigger deal could still be another year.
