It’s a teddit link so it’s not contributing to reddit etc.
It getting harder to get timely appointment from recent years development in BC. It went from be able to book family doc in the same week to now about 1 month to 4 months away depending on how popular your doctor is. So with specialist it’s gonna get harder.
Some years ago we were able to get a family doctor who had her own little walk-in clinic. The waiting room always had some patients in it, but she would see you within an hour.
Since the pandemic the clinic is mostly empty because she no longer accepts walk-ins and even patients in her roster must get a telephone appointment first before even having the possibility of meeting her in person. And when you have an in-person appointment it only takes a day or two and when you arrive you can see that there are no patients before or after you – she must be seeing very few people per day.
Her case isn’t unique. It is difficult to find walk-in clinics anymore, and family doctors accepting new patients were already unicorns before the pandemic. Why is this happening? What sort of incentives and disincentives in the system turned regular doctors into hermits that do a fraction of the work they used to? Large swaths of the population are not receiving any medical care at all and we are considering to move out of the country.
Note: below is personal conversation with a doctor with no actual policy, budget allocation etc to back up claims.
My family doctor did warn about removing MSP since the first time(cut MSP in half), he said he had problem booking specialist for other patients(their quota are cut). And worry that further cut would affect GP as well. I haven’t see him in person for almost over 2 years cause the booking difficulty.
I post this a while ago on reddit before the blackout and one posted that the budget is not cut after remove MSP. And since we don’t know how the GP quota works, unless a GP doctor is willing to share info it’s all guessing.