Stand-alone virtual care services have a role

It is important to add our voice and outrage to the growing number of Ontario physicians who are deeply concerned about the recent changes to virtual care funding that will make it even more difficult for Ontarians to have timely access to a health provider—adding to the burden of an already overwhelmed healthcare system. The current reality is that patients value access to virtual care services. It provides an accessible, patient-centric approach to care. But what patient’s want—they certainly don’t get!—and as of Dec. 1 it is getting a whole lot worse. There is little disagreement that having the privilege of being attached to a practice that provides comprehensive, integrated primary care is the desired standard, but today that is not the model of care available to an increasing number of Ontarians. Read: Logging off? Will updates to fees prove to be the death knell for virtual care in Ontario? I haven’t heard a system stakeholder describe the current situation in Ontario healthcare as anything but a crisis, and that is before we feel the full impacts of this COVID-19 wave and flu season. One might therefore conclude that poorer health outcomes will actually be linked to not seeing a physician at all. That perspective is missing—there is no discussion about what will happen if there is actually no avenue for patients—virtual care provides an important capacity supporting service to both address minor clinical issues and to further provide a triage point if the patient needs to be re-directed. Stand-alone virtual care services do have a role in our healthcare system. Work needs to be done on integration and sustainment in a manner that supports patients and delivers accountable use of the province’s resources. The reality that we can agree on is that our health system is overwhelmed—physicians across our communities are at the breaking point, hospitals reporting daily that they are over capacity, delays, cancellations, excessive waits for almost all health services, and yet at a time when the resources have never been more strained, the government’s response is to kick out another pillar of support so that virtual care is no longer viable even to fill the gaps and bridge the divide to access primary care services. We can debate health human resource planning models and how we got here. That is not today’s debate. Our provincial healthcare system is under siege and the changes to virtual care are arbitrary and simply being introduced at the absolute worst time. Come back to this next year government – where there is a better answer for resources in the community—but don’t make patients and providers pay for your arbitrary policy whimsy. The call to this government—defer the implementation of virtual care policy and compensation changes until you have addressed capacity, human resources and information exchange issues in healthcare. A note on our organization—at MD Connected and Telemed MD we have over 120—including both family physicians and specialists. In the last 12 months we have provided approximately 200,000 patients encounters through virtual care. We are reaching out on behalf of a committed group of Ontario physicians that serve a broad base of Ontarians to help resolve our concerns about the implementation of the Physician Services Agreement (PSA) as it relates to primary and virtual care. Dr. Filza Naveed is chief medical officer at MDConnected.

Stand-alone virtual care services have a role

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