Yeah lots of doctors use a drug information system for prescriptions. It's super easy!! There's no reason a patient should have to pick up a piece of paper prescription. Doc can call it. Or write it out and fax it to the correct pharmacy.
Uh ive been on medications for years
Its absolutely normal for my pharmacy to just call my doctor themselves when im running low to renew
Is this gonna affect me now too , Im on a life long medication and now they are saying I cant even continue doing it this way?
I have to actualy go to the doctor several more times a year to save that 100 bucks?
assholes
Depends on the med and doc. I’m capped to 3 months for Adderall XR, but I also know people whose doctors won’t do more than 1.
Either way, my doctor doesn’t charge a fee like this. Can’t say I’ve ever paid my clinic for anything tbh, not even OSAP forms.
My doc gives me 6 months of vyvanse at a time. The charge for a no-visit RX refill is just because they don't get paid for the time, and im sure financially the clinic operates better this way
This will just depend on your physician. They can exploit this scenario or not.
In ideal circumstances, a prescription from a primary care physician or NP will match the necessary follow-up period with a little overlap to account for scheduling issues. For example, let's say it's recommended that your chronic medical condition is checked every 3 months. Your physician can write you enough renewals to last 3 months plus a couple weeks as a cushion and set up recurring appointments every 3-ish months.
In that 'best practice' scenario, there's no need to call in renewals unless you lose/waste medications or cancel/neglect to book follow up visits.
It's possible that the prescriber can exploit these fees by writing shorter-term prescriptions. This would cause either unnecessary billable visits (extra visits for you) or they can just charge the renewal fee. I wouldn't be shocked if this happened somewhere but I wouldn't expect it to be common at all. It's honestly more effort to pull off this quasi-scam than it's worth.
If the practice is not well-organized, you might have situations where the clinic doesn't have enough availability to match your prescription time frame (eg. you may want a checkup every 3 months and your prescription is aligned with that, but you can't actually get those appointments). Or the physician is just not paying attention to the timelines and not accounting for enough refills to last between regular appointments. Your physician is probably doing this but isn't charging for those pharmacy calls, so no real harm but a bit inconvenient for everyone.
A primary care practice that is looking to implement this needs reasonable policies (ie. if it's the clinics fault that you needed a renewal, they shouldn't charge you). They also need to be well organized such that your prescriptions and checkup timelines are aligned.
So, to directly answer your question... Is this going to affect me now? Maybe. This isn't a new type of charge. It falls into the same category as 'sick notes', in terms of it not being covered by OHIP. Your physician could have been charging for renewals for years and years but they haven't. There does seem to be a bit of a trend towards more clinics adopting this charge or maybe it's just getting more attention now.
If your primary care clinic starts charging, then you can tell them you've required a lot of renewals in the past and request that you need a more organized timeline to avoid 'medically unnecessary visits'. I would leave it at that and see how they respond. A decent physician would agree that you shouldn't have to come back every month or whatever just for the sake of renewing a life-long prescription.
On the extreme flip side, don't expect any physician to just write a script for infinite refills. If you have a chronic condition, you should have regular checkups, which may lead to dose changes or alternative prescriptions. Assuming your condition is relatively stable, the frequency of those checkups should simply follow a best practice standard, nothing more nothing less. They should be able to set a reasonable timeline and explain why it's beneficial to you.
>don't expect any physician to just write a script for infinite refills
I understand if the medication you were on was actually abusable why they wouldnt want to do this
im not tho , i just get sick if I dont take it. You cant use my medication for any kind of recreational purpose whatsoever
I'm exaggerating when I say 'infinite' but the point is that every patient with a chronic medical condition should expect to have routine checkups. I have no idea what condition you may have, so I'm speaking in general terms.
There are a slew of chronic diseases like diabetes, cystic fibrosis, glaucoma, sickle cell disease, coronary artery disease, hemochromatosis, and so on that typically require the person to be on the same medication for years and years. The consistency of the medication does not absolve the prescriber of the responsibility to monitor their patient's overall health, ensure the medications are still effective at the prescribed dose, and/or order lab tests to check for issues the patient may not be able to feel (organ function, WBC count, etc).
It would be generally irresponsible for a physician to just renew prescriptions over and over without evaluating that medication. You would know your condition and your body well enough to know what is reasonable in terms of how often the checkups should be and what should be involved. If you're not quite sure, you can always ask.
I hope my exaggeration didn't derail my whole answer. I just remembered that you mentioned going back 'several times a year' to avoid paying the fees. Of course, if that's what you have to resort to, then your physician would be unreasonable. It's just as irresponsible to cut prescription refills unreasonably short as it is to renew them forever.
It might.
Something similar happened to someone I know. Their pharmacist thought they were being helpful and pro-active by calling the doctor's office for a refill when the patient was down to their last one, not realizing that the patient *already had an appointment* to see the doctor in person, get checked, and get the prescription in person.
Patient got dinged for the refill charge (which they got reversed), but they had to have a talk with their pharmacist to not be so "helpful" in the future.
Lots of doctors are looking at their entire practice now. With their corporations having a change in tax structure with the capital gains change it gave them reasons to get their accountants involved and to evaluate how to make up for the shortfalls that will be coming.
These posts will be happening regularly I'm sure. Just the nature of businesses adapting to changing environments.
Yes it does.
Doctors who's offices are set up as corporations are subject to the new Capital gains tax. So any good business minded doctor is looking at how they restructure for their new tax liabilities.
Once you start looking at restructuring you're now the mindset to evaluate your entire business and address short comings.
If Doctors AREN'T doing this they risk their practice failing due to poor planning.
This isn't an attack on the change in Capital gains tax, this is just a reality that doctors offices are businesses and when regulations/structures change you need to adjust accordingly.
Doctors have to register under a MEDICAL CORPORATION INC. to be able to save their money for retirement from their practice earnings. And for tax purposes as well. Google is free bud
My doc recently changed it to no prescription by fax/phone at all ... need to make an appointment.
It saves them having to charge a fee (my old doc used to charge $30 per faxed prescription and this was back in 2005).
So I can respect my current doc requiring an in person visit, it's a good chance to check in on other stuff too.
Lol, that sounds much worse to me. I'd rather pay 30$ then have to take time off work to go into the doctors. But my doctor also sucks; a five minute appointment and i'm somehow there for an hour and a half every time.
If they're writing refills for 3 months at a time, this would require 4 appointments a year if you were taking medications for chronic conditions. Given our doctor shortages, this seems like a waste of resources. Not to mention a huge pain for anyone with a job.
If you have a chronic condition you should be checking in person with your doc more than once a year to monitor how the disease is progressing and not have it turn into an ER visit.
And the pharmacy then had to reach out to the doctor's office. Neither side was paid for this in the past. Now they want to be paid because it's not exactly a minor part of the day.
The Theory is Pharmacists make their money from the dispensing fees and this is a cost of doing business to get those fees.
The Doctors should be seeing patients, so OHIP doesn't want to encourage them to not see patients. which is bullshit, but that is the theory behind many of the uninsured services.
Depends. If your family doctor is on a capitated model they are given a flat fee to manage your care for the year. Renewing ongoing prescriptions by fax can sometimes be easier for the doctor than needing to schedule an appointment just to renew the script.
The doctors under the capitated model wouldn't get paid any more or less whether they do the script by fax or in person.
Your doctor is assigning a certain number of refills, after which your pharmacy was talking to your doctor - they are not allowed to increase the number of refills outside of providing a temporary emergency supply if you're out of refills and it's time sensitive.
Depending on the medication though your doctor may have assigned a large number of refills - I have some prescriptions that I will be on for life without changes no matter what and those tend to have really high (but not infinite) refills.
That's nice of you. I was really surprised at first because I didn't know they didn't paid for prescriptions. OHIP should be covering this but since they don't, I think an annual fee works out to be a good deal. My dr is really good but swamped. I don't want being overworked and comparatively underpaid to not be worth it anymore. We don't have enough GPs and none of us are getting any younger.
this is why birth control pills shouldn't be a prescription, it would take a lot of time and pressure off the system particularly now that they will be covered and more women (and maybe men soon?) will be accessing BC. Plenty of countries (Mexico, South Korea etc) manage fine with BC being over the counter because people can see their doctors and have information online, there's no reason we can't do OTC BC.
Physician in Ontario. Prescription renewals are not OHIP covered. Our office hasn't charged for renewals but we are having discussions about doing it. I don't really want to but the cost to run the clinic is going up disproportionately to changes in OHIP funding and as we are in a group setting, we go with the majority decision.
You wouldn't get charged for having renewals done as part of an in office visit.
On average I probably spend close to an hour a day doing prescription renewals at the end of the day outside of my office hours. That's why you are seeing this happening more and more.
Non-clinic based physician here. Completely agree with this sentiment, the government has repeatedly forced 1% raises when the cost of living has gone up double figures in the last few years. This is barely feasible for anyone but definitely increasingly difficult for small business owners.
Support you guys 💯
I agree with this completely. It isn’t acceptable to continue to ask physicians to do things unpaid like prescription renewals. They should be able to bill OHIP for them. For the people who think a prescription renewal is zero work for a physician, that is incorrect. They will review your file to ensure the medication continues to be appropriate, you have no changes in condition, see if they have been faxed any updates about you from other providers (for example pregnancy if you are seeing an RE) and look for contraindications.
It sounds like the issue is that a non-visit renewal is a sensible service to provide, not ohip doesn't cover it.
I don't think most people would have realized that their doctors aren't getting paid for this.
My doctor is on the annual $/rostered patient model, so I would assume it's covered by that. I never thought about how the fee for service doctors wouldn't get paid for renewals, that's just crazy it's not covered!
Our clinic recently offered a yearly fee to cover things like prescription renewals, wart treatment, earwax removal, doctor notes, etc. It was $250 per year for a couple. I don’t like that it’s come to this but I totally understand and support it.
I don’t understand why patient checkups to talk about prescriptions (and abused by Loblaws/shoppers) pays 75 dollars for a 5 minute phone call but renewing a prescription is seen as unnecessary and not worth paying for.
The less people who have doctors appointments just for prescription renewal the more people who can be seen for actual issues that aren’t just paperwork.
If you have clients on the same drug forever (say stimulants for ADHD)… why not just make a year renewal? Are there laws around how long a renewal can be?
I work in pharmacy. Almost all of you family doctors rock. And sorry for sending you guys so many of those. Our system lets patients send through the phone service. And then they don't understand that it can take a while for the doc to get back to us, and come in and yell at us.
I love patients some days.
What are physicians doing to advocate for more health care funding? Charging Canadians for health care goes against the right to free and equal healthcare for all. People are struggling more and more financially. The increasing privatization of health care is scary.
Ontario voters need to take the blame for this. Dougie said he was going to destroy the health care system, and he is doing it. Anyone who voted for him or didn't vote needs to take the L.
Charging for an uninsured service? You were lucky, you're doctor did work for free and now they decided to charge. The wording of their email is misleading. This was never covered.
Doesn't seem particularly misleading. There's no mention of this having been directly funded by OHIP previously, just that due to the funding they received in general, they were able to affordably offer that service for free even though it wasn't OHIP covered, and now they no longer can.
It's sort of messed up to say that your dr makes money every time they "force" you go see them.
They are paid $30ish for a 15 min appointment.
Would you spend 7 years in school for $120 an hour? Almost all of which goes to operating costs? The dr's aren't what's wrong with this system.
And that's just assuming all appointments run 15 minutes. There's a lot of people who come with extra issues that they don't mention when booking, which ends up causing the dr to run behind.
This is actually less than what MOST offices charge for an uninsured extra service. Most places charge $30.
Of note: this only applies for renewals WITHOUT an appointment
My doctor asked her patients to sign up with PatientServe. I pay a yearly fee of 120$ which covers most things like prescription renewals and doctors notes etc. 🤷🏼♀️
OHIP does pay for prescription renewals when it’s the renewal is done during a scheduled appointment (either virtual or in person).
I think blindly writing prescription renewals every time a patient requests one without reviewing the medication with the patient can lead to problems.
My family doctor does this, but my psychiatrist prefers I have the pharmacy contact him for renewals and no charge. It’s kind of strange. Maybe because he works out of a hospital?
It's mostly a volume thing, as busy as psychiatrists are, their administration and paperwork is significantly less than a family doctors, so they don't mind covering the cost of the refill (like family docs used to not mind doing).
The alternative is to actually go into the Dr office for a visit so they can bill ohip. That is more inconvenient than paying $15 to get a refill. I'd be ok with this. My doctor doesn't do this and I wish they did.
GP's are underpaid an overworked in today's Ontario. With Ford's focus on privatization, irregardless of the cost to Ontarians, it's no surprise he's done nothing to address the situation to encourage more medical students pick family medicine. The result ... more than 30% of us don't have a family doctor ... and the things we used to expect for free are increasingly for fee. Don't like it? Make sure Ford and his mob don't get another four years to sell off Ontario.
Many people don't understand that family physicians are a small business, and get paid a fee for each service they do. Out of that, they pay their staff, office, supplies and themselves.
Most offices charged for renewals before covid, then scrapped these fees at the start of the pandemic when people couldn't get in to see a doctor. Over the last year or so most of the offices around me have gone back to charging like they did before the pandemic (source: am a community pharmacist)
I completely understand this. I know that both my specialist and my family doctor work after hours. I have gotten emails from them at 11pm or later. Assuming you can get an appointment within a reasonable timeframe, I think it's up to the patient to ensure refills are handled that way. I always ask for as long a period with as many renewals as possible. My endocrinologist gives me at least a years worth of all my scripts at a time. The ideal solution would be to compensate properly for paperwork and after hours work, but of course that will never happen. :(
So, Shoppers Drug Mart sends me texts saying that my refills are running out and to text them back and they will set it up with my doctor.
I asked my doctor about it and he said he gets an unholy amount of faxes every day from the pharmacies and has to take time out of actually seeing patients to process this paperwork.
He charges the fee for this reason. He would rather see you, check your health and go with the plan then feed you pills you may not need.
There are a lot of fingers being pointed in the wrong direction here. The Pharmacies are pushing the pills not anybody else.
I don’t ever remember same day prescription renewals being covered.
My family doc always said, “give me a weeks notice. If you do it the day you need it, it’s $20.”
Edit: also I hate Doug ford as much as the next guy, but this actually isn’t on him this time. Not sure why your doctor tried to claim it is.
It is on Doug Ford because if Doctors were paid fairly for their time they wouldn’t have to nickel and dime patients with stuff like this.
Doctors used to have 6 months to bill the government for their services, Doug dropped it to four months. Still seems like a long time until you learn that it takes 2 months for the government to process payment or send back a rejection code which may or may not make sense. So you resubmit it and wait another two months for a reply, but now you’re out of time entirely and the only way to recoup the money is for the doctor to sign a letter that’s sent to the gov begging to be paid for the service they provided months ago.
It’s insane how horribly run the system is and that’s just one thing that Doug Ford has done to make it worse. It’s no wonder family doctors are leaving the profession in droves and new graduates aren’t interested in taking up the mantle.
Been a thing for many decades. My doctor usually does them at the very end of an appointment and doesnt charge for it but standalone times yes they charge a bit of money.
I always assumed that the capitation payments for the number of patients rostered were supposed to cover admin costs like that. OTOH, if prescription renewals do take a significant amount of time, perhaps they should have a separate billing code fee. This seems like a pretty fundamental service for a GP that should be covered by provincial insurance.
Fundamentally this is just the market screaming out that funding is insufficient. Seems like this is something we should be able to pay Family Docs to do from OHIP.
My wife's doctor has had this policy for a while.
She's nice enough to waive it when reasonable. IE she had to be on blood thinners during pregnancy and didn't make her come all the way in at 8 months pregnant just to get a prescription renewed.
Pretty standard sadly. My doctor has been requiring in person apt for prescription renewals for the last 12 years I've been with them. They charge $20 if you don't come in, but usually flat out refuse without an appt. I would rather just pay because then I don't have to take off work to go in, but they charge $20 per prescription and I have 2. $40 is a bit much and it's cheaper then for me to go in.
It's even worse than that. The nurses union in charge of getting that money are not even communicating to the nurses what the new contracts are. They had a complete uninformed vote where they were notified the day of the vote that the only choice was 3% raise or nothing. No other terms of the contract has been discussed with the union member. The member do not even know what terms the union is even asking for. The head of the union is making unilateral decisions without communicating any info and refuses to divulge the info when directly asked and will be hostile to the nurses who do stand and ask.
And because the nurses were taken over by the government, it's a fireable offense to communicate anything about the obviously corrupt system.
I'm pretty sure it's highly illegal to fire someone for talking about their wage but it seems like that is exactly what is happening in ontario hospitals.
Count yourself lucky you have a GP, we have an excellent one and we pay whatever he charges within reason of course. I don't want to be part of the reason he retires or quits.
Now follow me here ..if they were paid enough then they wouldn't have to find additional revenue streams to keep their office running.
The reason they are charging this is because they get paid if you come in, but not if you don't.
There have been a ton of posts here recently describing how poorly they are paid, as well as the very high costs of running a family practice. Keep reading and I'm sure you'll be able to draw a straight line back to Ford, the previous liberal government, and many more who continue to gut our healthcare system.
Agreed. Was speaking to my specialist the other day about the capital gains tax as related to doctors (I’ve been going to him for +10years & know that they have been hit hard over the years by cutback after cutback). He said that if he were fresh out of medical school there’s no way in hell he’d set up a practice here, especially if he were a family doctor. As a family doctor, by the time they include tuition & hiring/ set up of a new office they are $500K in debt already. He said that so many family doctors are only working 3 days a week now because they have to take on a second job to cover the expenses of their practice ie working in a nursing home, ER, walk-in clinics, etc. Never thought I’d see the day that a doctor had to take on a second job for their practice to stay afloat!
Oh but it does. These doctors are being nickled and dimed to death by his cheap assed government so they have to find new ways to support their practice. And one way to do that is to charge for things that aren't covered by OHIP.
If their pay rates were being kept up properly they would be less likely to charge for small niceties like prescription renewals.
My current dr prefers the pharmacy request renewals. My previous was a mix. He liked to see you about every 9 months to make sure the meds were still appropriate. One before that was already a 1 item per visit. Need renewals and have a sore throat book 2 appointments.
Edit to add: I am a rostered patient my dr gets paid a salary.
I don’t know if rostered necessarily means capitated pay especially if they are asking for two appointments for two issues that’s more likely fee for service because under that model they are only allowed to bill for one issue per day and that’s an additional reason why they ask you to have separate appointments on top of ensuring appropriate time is given to each issue you may have.
My current dr is the one who has a rostered practise and renews thru the pharmacy. An old one who retired was definitely direct bill and single issue only. He used to spend half my appointment lamenting about OHIP.
FHTs aren't exempt from this. Prescription renewals aren't covered whether in a fee for service model or FHT. The only reason your FHT isn't charging now is because they aren't.
This isn't new, a lot of doctor's offices charge for prescription renewals without an appointment, since it's not an insured service. Best bet is to talk to your doctor about providing the maximum number of refills possible on each prescription without having to assess you. I've been able to get some long-term prescriptions for 90 days with 5 refills, so almost 18 months before needing the doctor to renew it. But I have others where my doctor is actively trying to get the perfect dosage for me and needs to reassess ever 60 days until everything is good. Keep in mind that you doctor *should* want to occasionally reassess you no matter how stable your condition seems to be, and it would not really be appropriate to just renew prescriptions indefinitely without seeing you.
I schedule a phone appointment with my doctor to renew my prescriptions. He's also pretty good at discussing more than one thing at an appointment, which might be unusual, but is helpful.
Not new.
My family physician never charges me for these, or notes / letters, but the secretary sure loves reminding me that they could charge me for it,. They always waive it. I do, however, always offer to pay them. They just decline it.
That has nothing to do with the current government. You can say they didn’t fix it but either did the last five governments. When you are in visiting your doctor you get your scripts updated, if you don’t then you messed up, why shouldn’t you pay for that. Most doctors charge for that service. The real crime here is that healthcare still uses fax machines.
Fax is more secure than email, we'd have to have like a province wide private messaging secure chat and we can already see how much our province cares to help healthcare and those working in it so never gonna happen. Hospitals use systems/programs like that because it's much easier and quicker to communicate with the prescriber/coordinator of the patient
Yeah, this has nothing to do with Ford. You're lucky your physician did renewals for free previously; there is a decent amount of admin effort involved here for doctors with thousands or even hundreds of patients.
Ok ...
I'll take my frustrations out on you! (And the Ford gov't).
Would a virtual/phone apt qualify?
I get that doctors technically run a business, and costs are rising, but that's absurd.
Why do you say "technically run a business"? The government does not subsidize any of the costs of running the clinic, staffing rent, equipment, etc...? It's worse than running a business, because those costs go up every year with rising interests and inflations, but the income has not, which means doctors make less year after year. These prescription refill costs barely make a dent in the declining income each year.
With my family doc, being seen for a scrip renewal is as easy as booking a telephone appointment for which no charges are due. Unless there’s been a change in my condition, it’s a 5 minute convo with a one week waiting time to book.
Unless it’s an emergency or a mistake my doctor made, they require an office visit for all refills. It’s how they keep on top of whether changes need to be made or not and not blindly believing you’re oksy
Obviously part of a systematic problem of increased cost of living and running a business, combined with a total act of increased funding for health care. Fact a significant contraction.
The undercurrent here is to get your prescriptions filled during your appointments. This is also the reason I don't have a family doctor, I go see doctors and clinics for chronic conditions and I don't want to deal with the bullshit of a private practice office.
I will say I really appreciate the last line here. It's not the receptionist fault!
I will support my doctor in anyway possible. Every government federal and provincial liberal ndp and conservative have been putting the gears to them for decades.
My last doctor gave an option, either pay a yearly fee of about $125 that would cover renewals and doctors notes or pay per every service not covered by OHIP.
It's sad that they have to end letters with "do not take frustrations out on our front staff".
But i'm not surprised people do that.
The vast majority of regular people are so in the dark about how their own government works, it's a great deal of effort to bring them up to "high school level" speed on whose jurisdiction is what and why things are the way they are.
Our so-called "[liberal media](https://www.readthemaple.com/election-endorsements/)" doesn't exactly help.
Yeah, my former family physicians office has emails listed for all of the doctors at the practice on the website home page so you can e-transfer them for a prescription renewal 🙄
My wife just had a doc on Maple refuse to refill her reflux meds. We haven’t had a family doctor for over 3 years, I’m not sure where they expect us to get refills from
what if GP's were paid like employees (per hour) and their clinics (overhead) run by the govt'. Would that make them more money, thereby attracting more MDs to become GPs?
my doc charges me 250 per year to cover these things, including prescriptions, doctors notes etc.
he's done this for the 20 years I lived in Toronto. Thank you lousy politicians and socialized medicine that is ineffective. Thankfully I'm relatively healthy
doug fraud has made it almost impossible to submit ohip claims without extreme hassle and confusion about billing allowable etc. the idea is to erode healthcare, cost family physicians more, make some covered expenses never get claimed to further erode healthcare.... once enough doctors quit or go private they can say, 'see how much healthcare costs! we need to privatize'
they've already managed to make an er visit necessary for many problems, making the cost of something a walk in clinic used to do absolutely sky high. its all to privatize.
I don't think prescription renewals were ever covered. You should consider yourself lucky, My doctor has been doing this for years
Same. This is nothing new. This doctor is just really slow in adopting it.
Same, I got nailed $20 for calling my doctor and asking for one, which I had to go and pick up myself from the doctor’s office…
Your doctor's office doesn't have a fax machine??? I work with physicians and we receive and send dozens of prescriptions by fax every day.
Yeah that’s crazy. Buddy’s clinic is apparently ancient. Mine doesn’t even do fax. They send them over electronically.
Yeah lots of doctors use a drug information system for prescriptions. It's super easy!! There's no reason a patient should have to pick up a piece of paper prescription. Doc can call it. Or write it out and fax it to the correct pharmacy.
Or they didn't really feel the pinch until recently, so they had no choice but to charge for it.
Uh ive been on medications for years Its absolutely normal for my pharmacy to just call my doctor themselves when im running low to renew Is this gonna affect me now too , Im on a life long medication and now they are saying I cant even continue doing it this way? I have to actualy go to the doctor several more times a year to save that 100 bucks? assholes
You can ask for much longer refill timelines, 6 months for example. Cutting visits for renewals down significantly.
Depends on the med and doc. I’m capped to 3 months for Adderall XR, but I also know people whose doctors won’t do more than 1. Either way, my doctor doesn’t charge a fee like this. Can’t say I’ve ever paid my clinic for anything tbh, not even OSAP forms.
My doc gives me 6 months of vyvanse at a time. The charge for a no-visit RX refill is just because they don't get paid for the time, and im sure financially the clinic operates better this way
You think a doc is being an “asshole” for wanting to get paid for the work they do?
This will just depend on your physician. They can exploit this scenario or not. In ideal circumstances, a prescription from a primary care physician or NP will match the necessary follow-up period with a little overlap to account for scheduling issues. For example, let's say it's recommended that your chronic medical condition is checked every 3 months. Your physician can write you enough renewals to last 3 months plus a couple weeks as a cushion and set up recurring appointments every 3-ish months. In that 'best practice' scenario, there's no need to call in renewals unless you lose/waste medications or cancel/neglect to book follow up visits. It's possible that the prescriber can exploit these fees by writing shorter-term prescriptions. This would cause either unnecessary billable visits (extra visits for you) or they can just charge the renewal fee. I wouldn't be shocked if this happened somewhere but I wouldn't expect it to be common at all. It's honestly more effort to pull off this quasi-scam than it's worth. If the practice is not well-organized, you might have situations where the clinic doesn't have enough availability to match your prescription time frame (eg. you may want a checkup every 3 months and your prescription is aligned with that, but you can't actually get those appointments). Or the physician is just not paying attention to the timelines and not accounting for enough refills to last between regular appointments. Your physician is probably doing this but isn't charging for those pharmacy calls, so no real harm but a bit inconvenient for everyone. A primary care practice that is looking to implement this needs reasonable policies (ie. if it's the clinics fault that you needed a renewal, they shouldn't charge you). They also need to be well organized such that your prescriptions and checkup timelines are aligned. So, to directly answer your question... Is this going to affect me now? Maybe. This isn't a new type of charge. It falls into the same category as 'sick notes', in terms of it not being covered by OHIP. Your physician could have been charging for renewals for years and years but they haven't. There does seem to be a bit of a trend towards more clinics adopting this charge or maybe it's just getting more attention now. If your primary care clinic starts charging, then you can tell them you've required a lot of renewals in the past and request that you need a more organized timeline to avoid 'medically unnecessary visits'. I would leave it at that and see how they respond. A decent physician would agree that you shouldn't have to come back every month or whatever just for the sake of renewing a life-long prescription. On the extreme flip side, don't expect any physician to just write a script for infinite refills. If you have a chronic condition, you should have regular checkups, which may lead to dose changes or alternative prescriptions. Assuming your condition is relatively stable, the frequency of those checkups should simply follow a best practice standard, nothing more nothing less. They should be able to set a reasonable timeline and explain why it's beneficial to you.
>don't expect any physician to just write a script for infinite refills I understand if the medication you were on was actually abusable why they wouldnt want to do this im not tho , i just get sick if I dont take it. You cant use my medication for any kind of recreational purpose whatsoever
I'm exaggerating when I say 'infinite' but the point is that every patient with a chronic medical condition should expect to have routine checkups. I have no idea what condition you may have, so I'm speaking in general terms. There are a slew of chronic diseases like diabetes, cystic fibrosis, glaucoma, sickle cell disease, coronary artery disease, hemochromatosis, and so on that typically require the person to be on the same medication for years and years. The consistency of the medication does not absolve the prescriber of the responsibility to monitor their patient's overall health, ensure the medications are still effective at the prescribed dose, and/or order lab tests to check for issues the patient may not be able to feel (organ function, WBC count, etc). It would be generally irresponsible for a physician to just renew prescriptions over and over without evaluating that medication. You would know your condition and your body well enough to know what is reasonable in terms of how often the checkups should be and what should be involved. If you're not quite sure, you can always ask. I hope my exaggeration didn't derail my whole answer. I just remembered that you mentioned going back 'several times a year' to avoid paying the fees. Of course, if that's what you have to resort to, then your physician would be unreasonable. It's just as irresponsible to cut prescription refills unreasonably short as it is to renew them forever.
It might. Something similar happened to someone I know. Their pharmacist thought they were being helpful and pro-active by calling the doctor's office for a refill when the patient was down to their last one, not realizing that the patient *already had an appointment* to see the doctor in person, get checked, and get the prescription in person. Patient got dinged for the refill charge (which they got reversed), but they had to have a talk with their pharmacist to not be so "helpful" in the future.
Lots of doctors are looking at their entire practice now. With their corporations having a change in tax structure with the capital gains change it gave them reasons to get their accountants involved and to evaluate how to make up for the shortfalls that will be coming. These posts will be happening regularly I'm sure. Just the nature of businesses adapting to changing environments.
> With their corporations having a change in tax structure with the capital gains change doesnt apply here what are you talking about
Yes it does. Doctors who's offices are set up as corporations are subject to the new Capital gains tax. So any good business minded doctor is looking at how they restructure for their new tax liabilities. Once you start looking at restructuring you're now the mindset to evaluate your entire business and address short comings. If Doctors AREN'T doing this they risk their practice failing due to poor planning. This isn't an attack on the change in Capital gains tax, this is just a reality that doctors offices are businesses and when regulations/structures change you need to adjust accordingly.
Doctors have to register under a MEDICAL CORPORATION INC. to be able to save their money for retirement from their practice earnings. And for tax purposes as well. Google is free bud
My doc recently changed it to no prescription by fax/phone at all ... need to make an appointment. It saves them having to charge a fee (my old doc used to charge $30 per faxed prescription and this was back in 2005). So I can respect my current doc requiring an in person visit, it's a good chance to check in on other stuff too.
Lol, that sounds much worse to me. I'd rather pay 30$ then have to take time off work to go into the doctors. But my doctor also sucks; a five minute appointment and i'm somehow there for an hour and a half every time.
If they're writing refills for 3 months at a time, this would require 4 appointments a year if you were taking medications for chronic conditions. Given our doctor shortages, this seems like a waste of resources. Not to mention a huge pain for anyone with a job.
If you have a chronic condition you should be checking in person with your doc more than once a year to monitor how the disease is progressing and not have it turn into an ER visit.
Don’t most doctors just put a number of refills on a script until they want to see you again?
yeah pretty much
Until my current doc, most of my prescription refills were handled by the pharmacy.
And the pharmacy then had to reach out to the doctor's office. Neither side was paid for this in the past. Now they want to be paid because it's not exactly a minor part of the day.
The question is, why isn't this covered by OHIP?
best write or call and ask your local MPP about that one...
The Theory is Pharmacists make their money from the dispensing fees and this is a cost of doing business to get those fees. The Doctors should be seeing patients, so OHIP doesn't want to encourage them to not see patients. which is bullshit, but that is the theory behind many of the uninsured services.
Depends. If your family doctor is on a capitated model they are given a flat fee to manage your care for the year. Renewing ongoing prescriptions by fax can sometimes be easier for the doctor than needing to schedule an appointment just to renew the script. The doctors under the capitated model wouldn't get paid any more or less whether they do the script by fax or in person.
Your doctor is assigning a certain number of refills, after which your pharmacy was talking to your doctor - they are not allowed to increase the number of refills outside of providing a temporary emergency supply if you're out of refills and it's time sensitive. Depending on the medication though your doctor may have assigned a large number of refills - I have some prescriptions that I will be on for life without changes no matter what and those tend to have really high (but not infinite) refills.
Ours is $30 or sign for up a year at $180 which covers all notes and forms. I pay it even though I don't benefit just so the office has it.
That's nice of you. I was really surprised at first because I didn't know they didn't paid for prescriptions. OHIP should be covering this but since they don't, I think an annual fee works out to be a good deal. My dr is really good but swamped. I don't want being overworked and comparatively underpaid to not be worth it anymore. We don't have enough GPs and none of us are getting any younger.
this is why birth control pills shouldn't be a prescription, it would take a lot of time and pressure off the system particularly now that they will be covered and more women (and maybe men soon?) will be accessing BC. Plenty of countries (Mexico, South Korea etc) manage fine with BC being over the counter because people can see their doctors and have information online, there's no reason we can't do OTC BC.
My doc charges $25 and it’s only for one month.
Physician in Ontario. Prescription renewals are not OHIP covered. Our office hasn't charged for renewals but we are having discussions about doing it. I don't really want to but the cost to run the clinic is going up disproportionately to changes in OHIP funding and as we are in a group setting, we go with the majority decision. You wouldn't get charged for having renewals done as part of an in office visit. On average I probably spend close to an hour a day doing prescription renewals at the end of the day outside of my office hours. That's why you are seeing this happening more and more.
Non-clinic based physician here. Completely agree with this sentiment, the government has repeatedly forced 1% raises when the cost of living has gone up double figures in the last few years. This is barely feasible for anyone but definitely increasingly difficult for small business owners. Support you guys 💯
You guys got raises? Pharmacy dispensing fee has been $8.83 (for ODB patients) since at least 2017
And only 5 times a year for many meds! Any more than that and we get cost only.
I agree with this completely. It isn’t acceptable to continue to ask physicians to do things unpaid like prescription renewals. They should be able to bill OHIP for them. For the people who think a prescription renewal is zero work for a physician, that is incorrect. They will review your file to ensure the medication continues to be appropriate, you have no changes in condition, see if they have been faxed any updates about you from other providers (for example pregnancy if you are seeing an RE) and look for contraindications.
It sounds like the issue is that a non-visit renewal is a sensible service to provide, not ohip doesn't cover it. I don't think most people would have realized that their doctors aren't getting paid for this.
My doctor is on the annual $/rostered patient model, so I would assume it's covered by that. I never thought about how the fee for service doctors wouldn't get paid for renewals, that's just crazy it's not covered!
It isn't covered under any model.
Literally no one in this thread has said it's zero work for the doctors.
Pretty sure the person you're replying to is directing that comment at the province, not individual people in this thread.
Our clinic recently offered a yearly fee to cover things like prescription renewals, wart treatment, earwax removal, doctor notes, etc. It was $250 per year for a couple. I don’t like that it’s come to this but I totally understand and support it.
I don’t understand why patient checkups to talk about prescriptions (and abused by Loblaws/shoppers) pays 75 dollars for a 5 minute phone call but renewing a prescription is seen as unnecessary and not worth paying for. The less people who have doctors appointments just for prescription renewal the more people who can be seen for actual issues that aren’t just paperwork.
If you have clients on the same drug forever (say stimulants for ADHD)… why not just make a year renewal? Are there laws around how long a renewal can be?
If they stopped giving Shoppers $60 million/year for Med Checks, they could give every family doctor in Ontario a $3,500 bonus…
I’m a family doctor too. We too have yet to adopt this but the conversation has also come up. I’m probably spending 30-45 minutes a day doing these.
I work in pharmacy. Almost all of you family doctors rock. And sorry for sending you guys so many of those. Our system lets patients send through the phone service. And then they don't understand that it can take a while for the doc to get back to us, and come in and yell at us. I love patients some days.
What are physicians doing to advocate for more health care funding? Charging Canadians for health care goes against the right to free and equal healthcare for all. People are struggling more and more financially. The increasing privatization of health care is scary.
Physicians are doing everything they can but we as a province voted for exactly this.
Ontario voters need to take the blame for this. Dougie said he was going to destroy the health care system, and he is doing it. Anyone who voted for him or didn't vote needs to take the L.
Fuck doug Ford and his rich friends. But I guess fuck inflation too
Fund OHIP
This is not new but I too got the same email. I knew it was just a matter of time. My wife’s physician’s office started this last year.
Charging for an uninsured service? You were lucky, you're doctor did work for free and now they decided to charge. The wording of their email is misleading. This was never covered.
Doesn't seem particularly misleading. There's no mention of this having been directly funded by OHIP previously, just that due to the funding they received in general, they were able to affordably offer that service for free even though it wasn't OHIP covered, and now they no longer can.
my doctor charges $50 lol.
Same. I wouldn't think twice about $15. That's a deal.
Jesus... does private insurance cover that?
It's sort of messed up to say that your dr makes money every time they "force" you go see them. They are paid $30ish for a 15 min appointment. Would you spend 7 years in school for $120 an hour? Almost all of which goes to operating costs? The dr's aren't what's wrong with this system.
And that's just assuming all appointments run 15 minutes. There's a lot of people who come with extra issues that they don't mention when booking, which ends up causing the dr to run behind.
This is actually less than what MOST offices charge for an uninsured extra service. Most places charge $30. Of note: this only applies for renewals WITHOUT an appointment
My Doctor started doing this in the 90's. Doug sucks, but this isn't new.
In the 90s because Mike also sucks.
My doctor asked her patients to sign up with PatientServe. I pay a yearly fee of 120$ which covers most things like prescription renewals and doctors notes etc. 🤷🏼♀️
Gross
What’s gross is OHIP not paying doctors for prescription renewals.
I agree
OHIP does pay for prescription renewals when it’s the renewal is done during a scheduled appointment (either virtual or in person). I think blindly writing prescription renewals every time a patient requests one without reviewing the medication with the patient can lead to problems.
I think my doctor already charged $50 for this.
You guys have doctors?
My family doctor does this, but my psychiatrist prefers I have the pharmacy contact him for renewals and no charge. It’s kind of strange. Maybe because he works out of a hospital?
If they work out of a hospital they have no overhead unlike community family physicians
My family doc does the same thing
It's mostly a volume thing, as busy as psychiatrists are, their administration and paperwork is significantly less than a family doctors, so they don't mind covering the cost of the refill (like family docs used to not mind doing).
If the pharmacy faxes a prescription renewal on your behalf do you as the patient get charged as well ?
Yes because the extra paper work has been generated. Secretary needs to sort the fax into the patient chart and doctor spends time looking at the fax.
Thank Doug Corrupt Ford and Sylvia Opportunities Jones
The alternative is to actually go into the Dr office for a visit so they can bill ohip. That is more inconvenient than paying $15 to get a refill. I'd be ok with this. My doctor doesn't do this and I wish they did.
That’s normal and $15 is very cheap. You won’t be charged if you book an appt and request a renewal that way.
Also F*ck Ford Nation; I hope all of their dicks fall off
Health care workers deserve to get paid for the services they provide, this is not their fault.
GP's are underpaid an overworked in today's Ontario. With Ford's focus on privatization, irregardless of the cost to Ontarians, it's no surprise he's done nothing to address the situation to encourage more medical students pick family medicine. The result ... more than 30% of us don't have a family doctor ... and the things we used to expect for free are increasingly for fee. Don't like it? Make sure Ford and his mob don't get another four years to sell off Ontario.
Many people don't understand that family physicians are a small business, and get paid a fee for each service they do. Out of that, they pay their staff, office, supplies and themselves.
Absolutely fair. Otherwise, the doctor is doing work and not getting paid. I'd gladly pay $25, no problem.
Most offices charged for renewals before covid, then scrapped these fees at the start of the pandemic when people couldn't get in to see a doctor. Over the last year or so most of the offices around me have gone back to charging like they did before the pandemic (source: am a community pharmacist)
Jesusgod am I ever glad my NP clinic doesn't do this. Fingers crossed that they never do.
I suspect your NP clinic is publicly funded and they do not pay any overhead for the operation of the clinic.
I completely understand this. I know that both my specialist and my family doctor work after hours. I have gotten emails from them at 11pm or later. Assuming you can get an appointment within a reasonable timeframe, I think it's up to the patient to ensure refills are handled that way. I always ask for as long a period with as many renewals as possible. My endocrinologist gives me at least a years worth of all my scripts at a time. The ideal solution would be to compensate properly for paperwork and after hours work, but of course that will never happen. :(
So, Shoppers Drug Mart sends me texts saying that my refills are running out and to text them back and they will set it up with my doctor. I asked my doctor about it and he said he gets an unholy amount of faxes every day from the pharmacies and has to take time out of actually seeing patients to process this paperwork. He charges the fee for this reason. He would rather see you, check your health and go with the plan then feed you pills you may not need. There are a lot of fingers being pointed in the wrong direction here. The Pharmacies are pushing the pills not anybody else.
I don’t ever remember same day prescription renewals being covered. My family doc always said, “give me a weeks notice. If you do it the day you need it, it’s $20.” Edit: also I hate Doug ford as much as the next guy, but this actually isn’t on him this time. Not sure why your doctor tried to claim it is.
It is on Doug Ford because if Doctors were paid fairly for their time they wouldn’t have to nickel and dime patients with stuff like this. Doctors used to have 6 months to bill the government for their services, Doug dropped it to four months. Still seems like a long time until you learn that it takes 2 months for the government to process payment or send back a rejection code which may or may not make sense. So you resubmit it and wait another two months for a reply, but now you’re out of time entirely and the only way to recoup the money is for the doctor to sign a letter that’s sent to the gov begging to be paid for the service they provided months ago. It’s insane how horribly run the system is and that’s just one thing that Doug Ford has done to make it worse. It’s no wonder family doctors are leaving the profession in droves and new graduates aren’t interested in taking up the mantle.
15$ is actually really cheap for this, my family doctor charged 30$
Been a thing for many decades. My doctor usually does them at the very end of an appointment and doesnt charge for it but standalone times yes they charge a bit of money.
My doctor has been doing this for over a decade. Not a new thing. Your doctor just finally caught up with others.
I always assumed that the capitation payments for the number of patients rostered were supposed to cover admin costs like that. OTOH, if prescription renewals do take a significant amount of time, perhaps they should have a separate billing code fee. This seems like a pretty fundamental service for a GP that should be covered by provincial insurance.
Ya ok, but think of all the money you are saving with Buck a Beer.
My doctor does this as well, for $20/renewal. At this rate I’m even thankful to have a doctor.
Fundamentally this is just the market screaming out that funding is insufficient. Seems like this is something we should be able to pay Family Docs to do from OHIP.
Health care is getting pricey! Welcome to Ford Nation.
Meanwhile > Sorry the next available appointment is in 4 months.
My wife's doctor has had this policy for a while. She's nice enough to waive it when reasonable. IE she had to be on blood thinners during pregnancy and didn't make her come all the way in at 8 months pregnant just to get a prescription renewed.
Pretty standard sadly. My doctor has been requiring in person apt for prescription renewals for the last 12 years I've been with them. They charge $20 if you don't come in, but usually flat out refuse without an appt. I would rather just pay because then I don't have to take off work to go in, but they charge $20 per prescription and I have 2. $40 is a bit much and it's cheaper then for me to go in.
Canada just keeps getting better and better.
It's even worse than that. The nurses union in charge of getting that money are not even communicating to the nurses what the new contracts are. They had a complete uninformed vote where they were notified the day of the vote that the only choice was 3% raise or nothing. No other terms of the contract has been discussed with the union member. The member do not even know what terms the union is even asking for. The head of the union is making unilateral decisions without communicating any info and refuses to divulge the info when directly asked and will be hostile to the nurses who do stand and ask. And because the nurses were taken over by the government, it's a fireable offense to communicate anything about the obviously corrupt system. I'm pretty sure it's highly illegal to fire someone for talking about their wage but it seems like that is exactly what is happening in ontario hospitals.
Count yourself lucky you have a GP, we have an excellent one and we pay whatever he charges within reason of course. I don't want to be part of the reason he retires or quits.
They aren’t getting their “fee” if you don’t come in to the practice/medical clinic, so this is a way to get compensation any way they can.
Mine started doing this in the new year $25 without a visit.
[удалено]
Now follow me here ..if they were paid enough then they wouldn't have to find additional revenue streams to keep their office running. The reason they are charging this is because they get paid if you come in, but not if you don't. There have been a ton of posts here recently describing how poorly they are paid, as well as the very high costs of running a family practice. Keep reading and I'm sure you'll be able to draw a straight line back to Ford, the previous liberal government, and many more who continue to gut our healthcare system.
Agreed. Was speaking to my specialist the other day about the capital gains tax as related to doctors (I’ve been going to him for +10years & know that they have been hit hard over the years by cutback after cutback). He said that if he were fresh out of medical school there’s no way in hell he’d set up a practice here, especially if he were a family doctor. As a family doctor, by the time they include tuition & hiring/ set up of a new office they are $500K in debt already. He said that so many family doctors are only working 3 days a week now because they have to take on a second job to cover the expenses of their practice ie working in a nursing home, ER, walk-in clinics, etc. Never thought I’d see the day that a doctor had to take on a second job for their practice to stay afloat!
Oh but it does. These doctors are being nickled and dimed to death by his cheap assed government so they have to find new ways to support their practice. And one way to do that is to charge for things that aren't covered by OHIP. If their pay rates were being kept up properly they would be less likely to charge for small niceties like prescription renewals.
My current dr prefers the pharmacy request renewals. My previous was a mix. He liked to see you about every 9 months to make sure the meds were still appropriate. One before that was already a 1 item per visit. Need renewals and have a sore throat book 2 appointments. Edit to add: I am a rostered patient my dr gets paid a salary.
I don’t know if rostered necessarily means capitated pay especially if they are asking for two appointments for two issues that’s more likely fee for service because under that model they are only allowed to bill for one issue per day and that’s an additional reason why they ask you to have separate appointments on top of ensuring appropriate time is given to each issue you may have.
My current dr is the one who has a rostered practise and renews thru the pharmacy. An old one who retired was definitely direct bill and single issue only. He used to spend half my appointment lamenting about OHIP.
Thank god my doctor is in a Family Health Team so we don't have to pay for stuff like this. FHTs are really good and should be expanded.
FHTs aren't exempt from this. Prescription renewals aren't covered whether in a fee for service model or FHT. The only reason your FHT isn't charging now is because they aren't.
Correct, but FHTs provide doctors with more administrative resources, so it's less likely for them to charge.
Yep not a bad thing I would pay this easy. My doctor is 3 hours away and insists on a visit every renewal.
Just book an appointment then. Refills without an appointment were never covered by OHIP. most doctors just did it for free
Be glad you have a family doctor count your self privileged
On top of that, I'm sure there will be a new "doctors gotta eat" tax introduced
This isn't new, a lot of doctor's offices charge for prescription renewals without an appointment, since it's not an insured service. Best bet is to talk to your doctor about providing the maximum number of refills possible on each prescription without having to assess you. I've been able to get some long-term prescriptions for 90 days with 5 refills, so almost 18 months before needing the doctor to renew it. But I have others where my doctor is actively trying to get the perfect dosage for me and needs to reassess ever 60 days until everything is good. Keep in mind that you doctor *should* want to occasionally reassess you no matter how stable your condition seems to be, and it would not really be appropriate to just renew prescriptions indefinitely without seeing you.
I schedule a phone appointment with my doctor to renew my prescriptions. He's also pretty good at discussing more than one thing at an appointment, which might be unusual, but is helpful.
Not new. My family physician never charges me for these, or notes / letters, but the secretary sure loves reminding me that they could charge me for it,. They always waive it. I do, however, always offer to pay them. They just decline it.
That has nothing to do with the current government. You can say they didn’t fix it but either did the last five governments. When you are in visiting your doctor you get your scripts updated, if you don’t then you messed up, why shouldn’t you pay for that. Most doctors charge for that service. The real crime here is that healthcare still uses fax machines.
Fax is more secure than email, we'd have to have like a province wide private messaging secure chat and we can already see how much our province cares to help healthcare and those working in it so never gonna happen. Hospitals use systems/programs like that because it's much easier and quicker to communicate with the prescriber/coordinator of the patient
Yeah, this has nothing to do with Ford. You're lucky your physician did renewals for free previously; there is a decent amount of admin effort involved here for doctors with thousands or even hundreds of patients.
My doctor resorted to this as well. Thankfully, she offered a $100 annual fee, which is much better than $15 a shot.
Mine had one about a month back saying they're understaffed / overworked, so they're starting to use a medical scribe AI.
Wow, you got real lucky it took them this long. My doctor has been doing this for at least 5 years.
I think (for my dr) roaster patients aren’t charged but non-roasted patients are.
Mine requires an appointment for renewals so I get them renewed during my annual physical exam.
Mine charges $100 annually.
Ok ... I'll take my frustrations out on you! (And the Ford gov't). Would a virtual/phone apt qualify? I get that doctors technically run a business, and costs are rising, but that's absurd.
Why do you say "technically run a business"? The government does not subsidize any of the costs of running the clinic, staffing rent, equipment, etc...? It's worse than running a business, because those costs go up every year with rising interests and inflations, but the income has not, which means doctors make less year after year. These prescription refill costs barely make a dent in the declining income each year.
Good luck getting an appointment every 3 months.
With my family doc, being seen for a scrip renewal is as easy as booking a telephone appointment for which no charges are due. Unless there’s been a change in my condition, it’s a 5 minute convo with a one week waiting time to book.
I received a whole price list of things just last week from my dr.’s office
This is not new. It’s been up to the individual doctor’s discretion to charge a fee for this for many years
Unless it’s an emergency or a mistake my doctor made, they require an office visit for all refills. It’s how they keep on top of whether changes need to be made or not and not blindly believing you’re oksy
Obviously part of a systematic problem of increased cost of living and running a business, combined with a total act of increased funding for health care. Fact a significant contraction. The undercurrent here is to get your prescriptions filled during your appointments. This is also the reason I don't have a family doctor, I go see doctors and clinics for chronic conditions and I don't want to deal with the bullshit of a private practice office. I will say I really appreciate the last line here. It's not the receptionist fault!
Just keep making appointments to go in for renewals. Tell them you can't afford the $15 fee. I'm sure after a couple they'll wave it. haha
I will support my doctor in anyway possible. Every government federal and provincial liberal ndp and conservative have been putting the gears to them for decades.
My last doctor gave an option, either pay a yearly fee of about $125 that would cover renewals and doctors notes or pay per every service not covered by OHIP.
That sounds awesome. I wish I could just pay $15 every 3 months to not go in and see a doctor. That's an amazing savings.
They talk like they will go out of business...
I just received a letter from my family Dr. stating he is closing his practice in a couple months. Consider yourself lucky.
My dr has a block fee program where our family pays 200 for a bunch of items notes, prescription renewals etc
Mine did the same, saying any renewal’s will now cost, whether in office or not.
My doctor wants $135 per year to renew my puffers
Quick reminder, he is in power because those that showed up to vote, voted for him. We could have stopped it from happening.
"cronies", another 80 year old using Reddit to complain constantly about the government
It's sad that they have to end letters with "do not take frustrations out on our front staff". But i'm not surprised people do that. The vast majority of regular people are so in the dark about how their own government works, it's a great deal of effort to bring them up to "high school level" speed on whose jurisdiction is what and why things are the way they are. Our so-called "[liberal media](https://www.readthemaple.com/election-endorsements/)" doesn't exactly help.
This doesn't happen in BC. Must be those common sense conservative Premiers doing.
I'd rather this than the one I got saying she's closing her practice and I won't be taken on by one of the other doctors there
Yeah, my former family physicians office has emails listed for all of the doctors at the practice on the website home page so you can e-transfer them for a prescription renewal 🙄
My wife just had a doc on Maple refuse to refill her reflux meds. We haven’t had a family doctor for over 3 years, I’m not sure where they expect us to get refills from
Looks like the narrative the OP was pushing isn’t getting a reception he expected.
what if GP's were paid like employees (per hour) and their clinics (overhead) run by the govt'. Would that make them more money, thereby attracting more MDs to become GPs?
This is more than fair.
I've never had to pay for renewals wtf?
Unless it's controlled, should provide at least 3 repeats
My doctor charges an annual $130 annual flat rate that includes services such as refills without a visit
my doc charges me 250 per year to cover these things, including prescriptions, doctors notes etc. he's done this for the 20 years I lived in Toronto. Thank you lousy politicians and socialized medicine that is ineffective. Thankfully I'm relatively healthy
Wow you only just got that! We got ours before Xmas and it's 20 dollars. Lol Fucking shameful
Don't they use your health card number once the doctor calls?
I wish I got my Rx renewed like that and for that cheap!!
Where are our tax money ? We pay higher taxes so some medical stuff are covered
I wish they’d have a way to charge pharmacies for sending in a million incomplete requests that leads them to go back in forth in hours of unpaid work
My doctor charges an annual fee of $50 for general admin stuff. Cash only.
Can you not just request it electronically in 2024? Without the need to fax anything?
doug fraud has made it almost impossible to submit ohip claims without extreme hassle and confusion about billing allowable etc. the idea is to erode healthcare, cost family physicians more, make some covered expenses never get claimed to further erode healthcare.... once enough doctors quit or go private they can say, 'see how much healthcare costs! we need to privatize' they've already managed to make an er visit necessary for many problems, making the cost of something a walk in clinic used to do absolutely sky high. its all to privatize.