If you don't like the way a chain of coffee shops treats their employees you can take your business elsewhere. Not so with Family Health Teams (FHT). Before you can find a new doctor you have to quit your old one and there is a huge waiting line for a new one. Our Owen Sound FHT is currently controlled by physicians.
There is an alternative: Community FHTs. Here is what the Alliance for Healthier Communities says, an "important difference between CFHTs and FHTs is that in CFHTs physicians are employed on a primarily salary basis; in FHTs physicians are a member of a physician group that is associated with the FHT and compensated using a capitation model." A capitation model apparently means that physicians get paid on a per patient basis which means that they don't care if the patients go on strike. They get paid regardless. And look at the hoops you have to jump to get to see one. Is that to discourage visits? Have you been sent to emerge if you couldn't wait?
FHTs were set up by the government. We have to find out what is involved with this "physician association", get rid of it and move to a CFHT. Perhaps our MPP will help us with that.
Bill Moses
