Quebec minister says Montreal family doctors don't work enough, shifts new jobs to suburbs
CTV
Politicians and doctors are angry after a sudden shift of 30 doctor positions from the city to the nearby suburbs—which the health minister defended by saying Montreal doctors need to work harder. The move has been called political interference and has already sparked a legal challenge.
“My patients will say that the phones are always busy, it's hard to get through, because we have such a deluge, such a demand,” said Dr. Michael Kalin, a family doctor working in Cote-St-Luc.
“We're in the midst of a global pandemic, more than 18 months in—some of us have not had the time to grieve because we're trying to do our best to fill in the gaps,” he said.
“Your doctors would love to take on more patients, we get asked every day, but we want to do the best job that we can.”
The decision by Health Minister Christian Dubé, which ran contrary to the plans provided by the office that does these kinds of medical staffing calculations, has already sparked a legal challenge that could upend the province’s whole system for allocating doctors to the various regions.
