Health Connect Ontario is referring patients to virtual-only doctors, a service the province is trying to discourage.
When the Ontario government reduced the fees paid to doctors for virtual-only appointments in December, it said the reason was to encourage family physicians to see patients in person as well as online.But the government’s own help line staffed by registered nurses — Health Connect Ontario — is referring patients they believe should see a doctor to those same virtual services.
“It is deeply disturbing, and in contradiction to what Doug Ford and Sylvia Jones are saying, if our publicly funded services like Health Connect Ontario are referring people to pay to access services like corporatized for-profit virtual care providers,” said Liberal health critic Dr. Adil Shamji, the MPP for Don Valley East, in an interview.
In contrast, a family doctor that sees a patient in person as well as virtually by video can typically charge around $36 a visit and up. A statement on MD Connected’s website says: “In response to these changes, MD Connected has been preparing a new model of service to continue to provide virtual health care to our patients. We believe in what we do for our communities and do not support the unsustainable fee cuts made by the Ontario government.”Many other companies are using loopholes to get around OHIP rules.
One of the only virtual-only medical services left that takes OHIP, and has not transitioned to a pay model despite using chat to triage patients, is Cover Health.Ahmad Elkalza, its CEO, said the company hasn’t stopped taking OHIP patients because “there are tons of people that need it that can’t go to their family doctor or aren’t getting access that they need, whether it’s in rural areas or even urban areas or because the wait times are too long.
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