REGINA – The NDP are focused once again on the use of virtual physicians in health care by introducing a bill requiring the public to be notified when those are being used.
Associate Health critic Keith Jorgenson introduced the Provincial Health Authority (ER Virtual Physician right-to-know) Amendment Act, in the legislature Wednesday afternoon.
Under the private member’s bill, it calls for the minister to “make information available to the public through a website or other electronic means when an emergency room in a hospital only has virtual physician services available and no physician is available to physically attend patients visiting the emergency room.”
The bill’s wording would also require the minister to make this information available within an hour that the provincial health authority approves the use of a virtual physician.
Jorgenson spoke about the bill alongside NDP Health critic Meara Conway at an embargoed news conference prior to the bill being introduced.
“I think it’s extraordinary we need to introduce legislation like this,” Jorgenson said. “It’s common sense for a government that’s been in power for 18 years that people need to know when a hospital or ER has no doctor on staff. Rural folk have a right to know.”
He also said that in an emergency rural people have to make decisions on what direction they are driving in. “And they need to know the hospital they are driving towards has a doctor that is able to help them given the emergency that they have on that day.”
Jorgenson said no one is questioning the use of virtual care — “it has a place in primary medicine” — but people had a right to know if they had a broken arm or were bleeding if a hospital had an actual doctor on site.
This latest NDP bill on notifications about the use of virtual physicians comes in the same session that the NDP have put forward another bill about notifications in the case of service disruptions and ER closures.
