I had a small role in a Toronto Star story looking into the “executive physicals” provided by some private clinics. With a high price tage, little benefit, and potential risks, these clinics may do more harm than good.
You can read the story here:Â https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/03/18/should-the-wealthy-be-all…
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A growing number of boutique medical clinics is establishing a second tier of health services that critics say encroaches on Ontario’s public health system by charging as much as $4,500 in annual fees for services such as no wait times, genetic analysis and added testing that isn’t always medically necessary.
A Toronto Star/Ryerson School of Journalism investigation documents a hybrid health-care regime that markets to a clientele who can access public health care while paying for services that reach beyond what is covered by OHIP, including 24/7 access to health-care professionals, fast-tracking of MRIs and a range of annual tests and lifestyle assessments.Â
“I think this does represent two tiers (of health care in Canada),†says Dr. Danielle Martin, a family physician in Toronto who was founding chair of Canadian Doctors for Medicare and in 2014 defended Canada’s public health-care system to the U.S. Congress as it deliberated on Obamacare.
“But it also undermines Medicare because it contributes to an ethos that the public system is not delivering the highest quality . . . We need to push back against this myth that having extra testing is harmless. The potential for harm is very great.â€
Clinic spokespeople counteredthat they offer responsible, supplementary care that fills in gaps in OHIP coverage, including preventative care and testing that follows expert guidelines.
“The real issue we’re trying to deal with is what we think OHIP should be dealing with,†says HealthCare 365 CEO Skip Schwartz. “Every patient in Ontario should have managed care and not just event-based care . . . I fundamentally believe that we should have a one-tier system. The question is, how do you make that one-tier system work better?â€
Reporters posing as patients visited six Toronto clinics — Cleveland Clinic, HealthCare 365, Medisys, Regal Health Services, Executive Health Centre and Medcan Clinic — and were shown health-care plans that included tests that Martin and others say not only cost the patients who pay for services but also public health care.Â
In her practice, Martin says she has seen patients arrive after visits to boutique clinics with test results who then get treated on the public dime.Â
“We need to push back against this myth that having extra testing is harmless. The potential for harm is very great,” says Dr. Danielle Martin, a family physician in Toronto who was founding chair of Canadian Doctors for Medicare.  (RICK MADONIK) Â
“The first time a patient showed up with 50 pages of results from an executive physical, I was floored, both by the expense the individual had gone through for results thatwere potentially harmful, and because largely insignificant abnormalities that had shown up were sent back into the public system to deal with,†she says.
Martin says private clinics do not typically refer patients to specialists or order further tests because it is “outside their scope†of practice.
“It’s actually the part of me that is most offended by these practices — as soon as you get sick, nobody wants to take care of you anymore.â€
In response to questions about the impact of boutique clinics, Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins said that there are medical billing practices that sit in a “legal grey area†that the ministry is “monitoring very closely as we accumulate information so that we can fully assess the situation.â€
“Any deviation from the values and integrity of our Medicare system are concerning, and we will continue working hard to uphold our high standards to build a health-care…