MONTREAL - Quebec Health Minister Rejean Hebert has revealed the Parti Quebecois government's plan to beef up health care.
Hebert has unveiled a five-point plan, which includes a vow to add 50 family health clinics across the province over the next two years.
The ministry will invest more than $10 million dollars in staffing those clinics with nurses, dieticians, social workers and other medical professionals.
There are also plans to develop a chronic illness treatment strategy for the province and hire 170 more family doctors within a year.
And he said the ministry will also earmark $60 million over the next four years to build electronic medical databases.
“People are going to have access to a family doctor that's the first good news for the patient, said Hebert.
He argued that investing in these services will attract more family doctors.
The new GPs will be students graduating from university medical programs.
“Our objective is that half of the medical students go to the family medicine programs,” said Hebert, who acknowledges that Quebec is facing a shortage of about 1,000 family physicians.
One expert suggested that the plan will indeed provide more incentive for medical students to get into family medicine.
“This announcement will probably not resolve the fact that two million Quebecers don't have a family physician, but it's a step in the right way,” said Dr. Louis Godin President of the Quebec Federation of General Practitioners
The changes are expected to be completely put into place sometime in 2016.
The six Montreal-area family medicine groups will be located in the following places: 5689 Rosemont, 1374 Mont-Royal East, 7005 Kildare, 4101 Molson, 8260 Maurice Duplessis and 1150 de l'Avenir in Laval.
