Category: Canada

Should doctors be paid a premium for assisting deaths?

Physicians can make more doing paperwork than performing this legal, but emotionally demanding, service. For many, it’s just not worth it.

MacLeans

Catherine McIntyre

Back in March, Dr. Tanja Daws took time off from her family practice to travel from B.C.’s Comox Valley to a remote community on Vancouver Island and provide an elderly patient who was dying and suffering with medical assistance in dying (MAID). After the five-and-a-half hour endeavour, which involved some of the most emotionally and technically difficult work Daws has ever done, the physician calculated that, after factoring in her staffing costs and other office expenses, she had lost about $28 for every hour she worked.

“It struck me that I can’t keep doing this,” says Daws. “I can work for nothing, but I can’t work for a loss.” . . . [Full text]

Why don’t more Ontario doctors provide medically assisted dying? It’s not the money

Ontario government looking at changes to fee and referral system to make it easier for doctors

CBC News

While physicians in other provinces have raised the touchy subject of how much they should get paid for ending a life, Dr. James Downar says that money is not what’s stopping more doctors from providing medically assisted dying in Ontario.

“Nobody is getting rich off this and nobody should think they’re going to get rich off this,” Downar, a critical and palliative care physician in Toronto, said in an interview.

He’s one of just six physicians in Toronto registered to provide medical aid in dying. There are 74 in all of Ontario. . . [Full text]

 

 

Why you can’t get a doctor-assisted death at St. Joseph’s in London

As a faith-based institution, St. Joe’s won’t help its patients die

CBC News

Andrew Lupton

Despite being allowed by law in Canada, patients at any St. Joseph’s Health Care London facility must go elsewhere if they want a medically assisted death.

In June of 2016, Parliament passed Bill C-14, which lays out the rules that allow doctors and nurse practioners to legally end the lives of patients who are suffering and whose deaths are “reasonably foreseeable.”

Faith-based exemptions

Doctors and faith-based intuitions in Ontario that object to doctor-assisted death for religious reasons can’t be forced to perform any procedure that helps a patient die.

As a Catholic intuition, St. Joseph’s won’t allow medically assisted deaths to happen at its facilities, which include the main hospital, the Mount Hope Centre for Long Term Care (394 beds) and the Parkwood Institute’s Main Building (14 palliative care beds and 156 long-term care beds). . . [Full Text]

 

 

Low fees have B.C. doctors thinking twice about providing assisted dying

‘We’re being paid 50% of what we would doing routine office work. So it’s difficult to justify continuing’

CBC News

Karin Larsen

Medically assisted dying has been legal in Canada for over a year, but one B.C. doctor says he can no longer afford to offer the service, because the costs involved are much greater than the $200 payout from the provincial medical services plan.

In a letter, Dr. Jesse Pewarchuk calls the situation “economically untenable” while outlining a number of steps a physician must follow in the medical assistance in dying (MAID) procedure. . . [Full text]

 

Meet 1 of only 2 London doctors willing to help their patients die

Dr. Scott Anderson says too many barriers stand between patients and access to a doctor-assisted death

CBC News

Although medically assisted dying has been law for more than a year in Canada, Dr. Scott Anderson is one of only two physicians in the London area willing to help his patients die.

Anderson, an emergency intensive care specialist at London Health Sciences Centre, is one of only 74 doctors in Ontario and 11 in the South West Local Health Integration Network registered with the province’s 1-800 number to help connect patients seeking the procedure with doctors willing to perform it. . . [Full text]