Ontario sends warning letters to doctors working high hours

You really can't make this stuff up. As a small-town family doctor, Adam Stewart looks after 1,700 patients. Family medicine doesn't stop when the clinic closes. Results, hospital reports, referrals, prescriptions, follow-up, patient questions. So imagine me, an Ontario family doctor, opening a letter like this from the Ministry this morning. It is flagging me for working too many days in a single year. The letter sent to hundreds of family doctors across the province is from the Health Ministry's Payment Accountability and Fraud Department. I know what I'm doing is legit and what I'm doing is... Thank Legit and in the best interest of my patients. Our patients need care and we are doing our best to fill that need. you According to the Ontario Medical Association, there are at least 2 million people on waitlists for family doctors. very It's a problem being compounded by fewer med students choosing to get into family medicine. much. Doctors have been stepping up to see more patients to work longer hours to ensure that Ontarians receive the high quality health care that they deserve and we should be supporting physicians who are doing that, not sending them warnings of investigations. Those letters that the OMA is referencing are standard. Health Minister Sylvia Jones says they're following the directive from the Auditor General last year that noted the province was not properly overseeing doctors' billings. This included physicians billing more than 24 hours a day. I want to be very clear, if the work has been done and the billing is appropriate, then there will be no action taken. You get all these policies and initiatives that are trying to tackle this, like maybe 1-5% of bad apples, and then it has all these unintended consequences for the well-intentioned, hard-working 95% of us. It's quite disheartening. Dr. Stewart is concerned about a potential chilling effect these letters might have. If physicians start rolling back their hours. What I think the letter should have said was, thank you doctor for working so hard. Ali Chiasan, CBC News, Toronto.