Why this Quebec family doctor practices in the private health care system

Quebec has tabled new legislation to try to keep young doctors from moving into the private system.

But one Montreal doctor who's gone private thinks she's found a way to give her profession and her patients what they need.

With no family doctor — and no time to sit and wait in a clinic or hospital — 20-year-old engineering student Penelope Reeves booked Dr. Aurelia Nguyen to see her at home.

"I really like home consultations because it's good to see the patient in their element," Nguyen said during a home visit.

It's an old fashioned house call but at a modern price.

For a simple consultation, it's $279, and for complex consultations it's $449, the doctor explained.

That's a cost not everyone could easily afford. But with her busy schedule, Reeves says she couldn't afford not to.

"One time I waited in the emergency room for 12 hours," she said.

It's better for Dr. Nguyen, too.

Besides being a GP, she's also a mother of four. So eight months ago, she decided to opt out of the public system, where she had little control to work on her own.

"I can just move the patient, move my schedule to adapt them for my family. Yeah, so its better," she said.

Dr. Nguyen came to Quebec from France, where patients can book a doctor — even a specialist — through a public website within a day or two.

She believes that's how a universal health system is supposed to work.

"I think it's better. It's better because we do a lot of prevention," she said. "

The council for the protection of patients says while some doctors at a CLSCs, including Verdun's are doing home visits, we need much more of this everywhere.

"This is the perfect solution at least for elders. Let's go and visit them before they get too sick and have to be transported to a hospital. To me, it's so logical," said Paul Brunet, president of the Council for the Protection of Patients.

And a doctor who is fighting to keep more Quebec doctors in the public system agrees we need more of this.

"You have to be often very, very sick to have access to public home care. So I could see why there would be a market," said Dr. Isabelle Leblanc, a family doctor and the president of Médecins québécois pour le régime public.

But she worries this kind of private home care may just further hurt an already bleeding public system.

"By doing that, it's removing one physician from the public health-care system. So it's less access for people that cannot pay," she said.

"So in a moment where we need as many hands on the deck as we can, it's removing people from the pool of physicians that will treat everyone. And notwithstanding the amount of money they have in their wallet. So I think it's a big concern in terms of equity, but I do see that there's a need for that."

Dr. Nguyen wishes she could give this kind of care to everyone regardless of their bank account, but says the way the Quebec public system is set up now that she cannot.

While she believes only a handful of Quebec GPs who have opted out of medicare are now making private house calls, she believes more will if the new Santé Quebec agency doesn't fix access to public health care fast.