A new physician led initiative, Family Medicine New Brunswick, will see family doctors work as a team to provide better care for patients on nights and weekends.
“We’re hoping that a greater number of New Brunswickers will have a family doctor. So we’ll be seeing doctors who are willing to take on more patients because they have more help to do that,” said Andrew MacLean, the Director of Family Medicine New Brunswick.
Teams of doctors will be using the patients EMR, or Electrical Medical Record, to keep tabs on each patients medical history.
“Everyone is rostered with their own patients, so they provide collaborative care. So when a physician is away on vacation or otherwise, their patients will be covered by those other physicians,” said Lynn Murphy-Kaulbeck, president of the New Brunswick Medical Society.
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This collaborative approach to providing care is used in other provinces.
The New Brunswick Medical Society hopes this approach will help retain new and existing physicians in the province while helping to fill the 82 job openings currently available.
“We were talking to doctors who were actually thinking of leaving the province before hearing about an opportunity to be able to practice in this way, for some doctors where they practice is not as important as what they can do in their day to day lives, if this is something that can enable them to do that, that absolutely encourages them to stay right here in new Brunswick,” said MacLean.
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Another major change in the provinces approach is reorganizing how doctors get paid.
Right now doctors are paid through a fee for service or a salaried model but in the future doctors will be paid a flat rate or fee for each patient they see.
“That allows them a little more time with each patient. So that’s where they get to work things like prevention and wellness, you know their chronic disease, by having a little more time to spend with them,” said Victor Boudreau, New Brunswick Health Minister.
The volunteer program will start in the fall, and within the next four years the Medical Society hopes to have at least 100 of the 750 physicians the province needs in the system.
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