MONTREAL — The amount of the annual bonus offered to family doctors for each patient registered through the front line access window (GAP) has decreased by $20 to reach $100 per patient annually.
The president of the Federation of General Practitioners of Quebec (FMOQ), Dr. Marc-André Amyot, presented to his members, Friday noon, the details of the agreement concluded the day before with the government of Quebec. Both parties appear satisfied with the agreement reached.
Another change to the agreement, the premium will no longer be paid in full as soon as the appointment is available. A first amount of $50 will be allocated when a time slot is open and the other $50 at the time of the appointment. “This is a concrete result for the population,” declared the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, on X.
“It was important for the government to ensure that patients not only remained registered, but that they were seen,” commented the president of the Treasury Board, Sonia LeBel, in a written statement.
A renewal clause is also included in the new agreement so that it can be renewed in one year. This should help prevent the government and general practitioners from negotiating in a climate of urgency and tension on this issue when the time comes.
“Remember that this is an interim agreement which allows registrations to be maintained while we negotiate the renewal of the framework agreement. It is on this agreement that we must now focus our energies,” declared Ms. LeBel.
Mr. Dubé spoke of a “bridge agreement” to explain that Quebecers will benefit from access to the GAP during the negotiations of the framework agreement.
The FMOQ also stressed on the social network X that negotiations for the renewal of the framework agreement, which expired in 2023, will continue in the coming months. She also clarified that the GAP agreement is financed “from the current envelope of the framework agreement”.
Since 2022, an annual premium of $120 has been paid for each patient registered with a family medicine group (GMF) via the GAP. The aim was for GMFs to take care of patients without a family doctor.
Dr Amyot has repeatedly argued that the bonus amount is used to hire staff and rent premises in order to accommodate more patients. “Doctors have reorganized their practice,” he said Thursday, before the conclusion of the agreement with Quebec was announced.
This agreement ended on May 31, which had the effect of reducing the number of appointments with a doctor available on the GAP. At one point, we could see that the number of appointments offered via the front line access window had increased from 17,604 in the week of May 18 to 1,133 for the week of June 29.
In a press scrum on Thursday, Dr. Amyot suggested that the number of appointments offered via the GAP should increase in comparison with the drop observed since the end of the agreement. However, this will not return to the “prior GAP state”.
He explained that some doctors who had decided to delay their retirement to provide services to the GAP may have retired now in the context where it was not certain that the agreement would be renewed.
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