Canada’s medical system is radically different from ours, but there’s at least one thing we have in common: a shortage of primary care doctors.
Now comes word from up north that a few overwhelmed primary care docs are using lotteries to kick patients out of their practices, while others are drawing names to choose new patients.
One family physician got rid of about 100 patients in two separate draws, Canada’s National Post reports. Ken Runciman, based in Powassan, Ontario, recently bought the 2,000-patient practice, which he says was busier than he’d been led to believe. He concluded that keeping all the patients wouldn’t have allowed him to spend enough time with each.
A new family practice in Newfoundland held a lottery last month to pick patients from thousands of applicants, the Post says. An Edmonton doctor used a lottery to cut 500 people from his heavy caseload. And Ontario regulators have received several reports of similar drawings.
Some five million Canadians don’t have a primary care doctor, the article says.
“There is only a certain number of people I can see in a day. My day is already 11 hours and I don’t care for it being longer,” Runciman told the Post. “I realize that, at 47, I can’t run my ass off like I did 20 years ago.”
Bonus Drawing: Health lotteries aren’t uniquely Canadian. Oregon recently held a lottery to determine which lucky residents would win state-subsidized insurance.
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