Gaétan Barrette, Minister of Health and Social Services, is announcing the opening of the Grande Inscription to facilitate the population’s access to longstanding and new family doctors.
Designed to simplify patients’ lives, the Grande Inscription will allow family doctors who are starting their practice to be attributed, on September 1 of each year, blocks of patients who are in the Québec Family Doctor Finder. These patients will thus receive faster access to a family doctor. This initiative will also allow patients whose doctors are retiring to find a new doctor as quickly as possible. We will ask doctors, on a voluntary basis, to plan for their retirement and to warn us in advance in order to coordinate it with the arrival of new practicing doctors on July 1st of each year.
This initiative follows from an agreement between the Ministère de la Santé et des Services Sociaux and the Federation of General Practitioners of Québec. The Grande Inscription is part of a series of actions that have been implemented since 2014 in order to improve access to primary health care and services and that have enabled more than 900,000 people to find a family doctor. These actions include:
- The agreement resulting from Bill 20 that sets targets for registration and attendance for family doctors;
- The establishment of 19 super-clinics that are open 12 hours a day, 7 days a week;
- The continued development of the family medicine group network, which now counts 315 groups;
- The establishment of the Québec Family Doctor Finder;
- The development of a free online appointment system, the Québec Medical Appointment Scheduler.
Quote:
Since 2014, thanks to our actions, 900,000 more people now have a family doctor. The Grande Inscription is an additional, permanent and annual means to allow more Quebecers to gain fast and easy access to a family doctor. In this way, we hope to simplify the lives of patients and solve the issue of access once and for all. I salute the commitment of the Federation of General Practitioners of Québec and its members to achieving the objectives we set for ourselves.
– Gaétan Barrette, Minister of Health and Social Services
Key points:
Attribution will be done so that doctors receive blocks of patients that represent current demographics and weighting. Thus, weighted demographic blocks of 1000 to 1500 patients will be attributed, or 620 for doctors who practice in a university family medicine group.
The patients covered will no longer have to go in for a first check-up before being officially registered with their doctor. It is important to emphasize that the majority of patients waiting on the Family Doctor Finder are non-vulnerable patients who do not require a quick appointment. That said, doctors are committed to prioritizing the most vulnerable patients.
Recall that in order to offer the greatest possible accessibility to a family doctor, performance targets were established as part of the agreement resulting from Bill 20, concluded in 2015 between the MSSS and the Federation of General Practitioners. The final targets correspond to a registration rate of 85% and an attendance rate of 80%. As of September 30, 2017, the registration rate was 77.8% and the attendance rate was 82.3%.
