Get the latest tech news

Family medicine is in decline

Why family medicine is dying

In February of that year, then health minister Tyler Shandro made the unilateral decision to reduce or eliminate fees for complexity and additional time modifiers (extra amounts doctors can bill for a patient whose needs are not straightforward—say, heart failure with poor kidney function and a new infection). It means that while Parks still treats the usual accident victims and heart attacks, he also sees all the folks such as Fox who bring their kids to ERs for things that might otherwise be dealt with more cheaply in a family doctor’s office. The health minister declined to be interviewed for this story, but her office provided a statement: “Alberta’s government is committed to making sure Albertans can access primary care when and where they need it.

Get the Android app