Your Doctor Won’t See You Now—or Ever Again
28th October 2024
HEN ELIZABETH FOX moved from Athabasca to the central Alberta hamlet of Elnora in 2013, finding a family doctor close to home was a breeze. “I was pregnant,” she says, “so they’ll all take you.”
But seven or eight years later, Fox’s clinic emailed her to say she was being de-rostered—removed from her doctor’s list of patients—and would have to find a new doctor. The doctor didn’t come in very much, and they needed her for other patients.
“Don’t you just shift your patients around?” Fox recalls asking. They didn’t, and it was up to her to find someone new. With three kids and a declining number of doctors accepting new patients, that proved easier said than done. Her family joined the 650,000 other Albertans who, according to the Alberta Medical Association, lack access to regular primary care.
Unspoken assumption: Canada has mandatory government-paid-for health care. Hence the talk of government mucking about with the fees. In effect, everybody in Canada is on Medicare.