McLane defends Health P.E.I. guidelines after doctors threaten to take legal action

The province's health minister says he's confident government, Health P.E.I. and the society that represents family doctors on the Island can reach a compromise in a dispute over physician workloads. 

Last week, the Medical Society of Prince Edward Island announced that it's planning legal action against Health P.E.I. over an update to targets for family physicians.

The society said the new targets for how many patients each doctor needs to accept are not what it agreed to when it signed a new physician services agreement with the province last year. 

On Monday, though, Health Minister Mark McLane told CBC News there must be checks in place so that the government can evaluate how the new agreement is working. 

"The first year of the [physician services agreement], there's no punitive measures in there. It's just there for information purposes only," McLane told CBC News: Compass host Louise Martin.

"I think we have a responsibility to measure our system. Obviously a system that you don't measure, you can't respond to challenges and you may identify opportunities."

Last August, the government and the medical society together announced the new physician services agreement, which saw P.E.I. become the first province in Canada to recognize family medicine as a specialty. 

The agreement also contained a plan to boost physician pay by 35 per cent over the next five years. 

But then last month, Health P.E.I. introduced a new operational guide that included what it called key performance indicators, or KPIs. 

They include a requirement that each family doctor see 24 patients a day, based on an average appointment being 15 minutes long. The guide also says each full-time family doctor's practice should have a minimum of 1,600 patients, with penalties imposed if the minimum isn't met.

The society contends that the new targets will drive family physicians out of the province, and said it has been "stonewalled" when it comes to consultation with the government.

On Monday, McLane said the society and Health P.E.I. have six weeks in which to provide feedback on the new guidelines and the performance indicators. 

He said the province needs to at least start with a framework to measure the success of the physician services agreement, given there's nothing comparable to it anywhere else in the country. 

"I'm pretty confident that they'll work through this. It's change management. It's hard; I understand that change is difficult," the health minister said. "Without a clear roadmap… we're going to have to work with our physicians to get there."