As hospitals in Ottawa and across Ontario deal with an overflow of patients, the Ontario government is reducing some of the fees it pays doctors who provide online care.
The move prompts a virtual pediatric clinic to begin charging a monthly subscription fee to those who use its service.
Two-year-old Henry was born with a connective tissue disorder and has spent most of his life in and out of hospital.
“He’s medically complex and it’s been the worst cold, flu and RSV season we’ve ever had,” says mother Alana Kaifetz. “Henry was due to have a routine heart catheterization, but it has been postponed four times because he keeps getting sick.”
Kaifetz, along with Henry’s father Matthew Cantor, need it to stay healthy and avoid unnecessary exposure to viruses. The family turned to an online virtual pediatric clinic – KixCare.
“It’s a platform that allows parents and caregivers like us access, frankly, to doctors,” Kaifetz says. “For example, we thought Henry recently had pink eye, and we were able to come to that conclusion using a KixCare doctor.”
The service provides 24 hours a day, seven days a week connections with health professionals from across Ontario.
During the pandemic, the province allowed doctors to charge the Ontario Health Insurance Plan the same fee for online visits as they do for in-person visits — about $80 per visit.
However, this was only temporary. On December 1, virtual care coverage will drop by 75 percent.
“A temporary service that was put in place during COVID is now being modified,” says Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones. “The Ontario Medical Association and the Ministry of Health are very proud that we were able to work together to develop an agreement to ensure that family physicians have the ability to use virtual care when appropriate, but we also ensure that that our family doctors see patients personally.”
KixCare plans to charge users a monthly subscription fee of $29 to offset the costs. This access will be primarily for nurses.
For Kaifetz, she says that at a time when hospitals are crowded with patients waiting dozens of hours for a doctor, this is not the right move.
“Everything about it feels really weird and backwards,” she says. “What we really don’t want is for those who are most vulnerable, our children who are medically vulnerable, to not have surgeries moved, not to be able to see their primary care providers, and not to have shortages of Tylenol, Advil and access to medicine.”
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