KITCHENER -- Many medical professionals who aren’t on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic say they are still at risk, going with little to no pay, and are concerned about what comes after.
“My income has significantly come down,” said Dr. Kassam Ashe, a Waterloo Region heart surgeon. “I’m still going to the hospital, I still have to see patients, put myself at risk, potentially my family too, all for a fraction of what I should be doing.”
Family physicians and medical clinics are now serving patients through virtual appointments.
New billing codes from the provincial government allow doctors to be paid for these appointments, but family physician Dr. Priya Suppal says there’s some difficulty to this, too.
“We’ve been told that due to some programming issues on the Ministry of Health’s side, they’re not going to be able to reprogram things and, in all likelihood, we won’t be paid until July,” she said.
The Ontario Medical Association says that nearly half of all clinics will be forced to close if changes aren’t made.
“I’m very worried about my patients right now,” said Dr. Sohail Gandhi, president of the association. “I’m very worried about them getting the care that they need.”
The Ministry of Health proposed three-month, interest free loans to physicians to help keep their practices running.
The OMA rejected the proposal and says it wasn’t a feasible option.
“The infrastructure that we maintain is critical for patients,” said Suppal. “For patients to not have access to their physician and certainly not access in a timely manner, is going to have devastating consequences.”
The association adds that doctors will not be able to double the number of appointments after the pandemic is over to make up for missed ones.
“To expect we’re going to do double the work to somehow catch up on this, it’s a never ending catch up game,” said Ashe.
The ministry says it will continue to support physicians during these difficult times.
