http://www.torontosun.com/2016/04/23/doctors-rally-outside-queens-park
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TORONTO - Remember that roughly $6.6 million billed by an ophthalmologist that health minister Eric Hoskins highlighted on Friday?
Dr. Nadia Alam wants you to know that all that money didn’t just go to one single doctor.
“That is a group practice that works together, that bills under one lead physician,” she explained on Saturday. “He’s taken it completely out of context.”
Alam joined hundreds of other physicians and supporters outside Queens Park for a weekend rally to protest cuts to health care that they say will harm patients and shut down clinics.
“Many found (Hoskins’) words disrespectful, divisive, manipulative, infuriating,” Alam said. “Why? Because physicians saw the political spin for the desperate lie it was.”
A day before the protest, Hoskins rolled out numbers indicating the highest billing doctors in Ontario, saying around 2% of the province’s physicians were responsible for almost 10% of all payments.
Figures he produced include an ophthalmologist who billed more than $6.6 million and a diagnostic radiologist who billed more than $5.1 million.
“What it says to me is we need a new collective approach to how physicians are compensated,” said Hoskins on Friday.
But Alam, a family doctor from Georgetown, says those figures simply reflect doctors caring for patients.
“I know of an obstetrician who is billing a significant amount because he works 70 hours a week and he has done so for 35 years, he is the only obstetrician for a city of 70,000,” she said.
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TORONTO - Remember that roughly $6.6 million billed by an ophthalmologist that health minister Eric Hoskins highlighted on Friday?
Dr. Nadia Alam wants you to know that all that money didn’t just go to one single doctor.
“That is a group practice that works together, that bills under one lead physician,” she explained on Saturday. “He’s taken it completely out of context.”
Alam joined hundreds of other physicians and supporters outside Queens Park for a weekend rally to protest cuts to health care that they say will harm patients and shut down clinics.
“Many found (Hoskins’) words disrespectful, divisive, manipulative, infuriating,” Alam said. “Why? Because physicians saw the political spin for the desperate lie it was.”
A day before the protest, Hoskins rolled out numbers indicating the highest billing doctors in Ontario, saying around 2% of the province’s physicians were responsible for almost 10% of all payments.
Figures he produced include an ophthalmologist who billed more than $6.6 million and a diagnostic radiologist who billed more than $5.1 million.
“What it says to me is we need a new collective approach to how physicians are compensated,” said Hoskins on Friday.
But Alam, a family doctor from Georgetown, says those figures simply reflect doctors caring for patients.
“I know of an obstetrician who is billing a significant amount because he works 70 hours a week and he has done so for 35 years, he is the only obstetrician for a city of 70,000,” she said.
