Some family doctors in Montreal are going private, with burnout and Quebec meddling to blame

The Quebec government’s latest attempt at telling Montreal’s family doctors they should be seeing more patients has landed with a thud, according to two general practitioners who said they are demoralized and tired of being micromanaged by the province.

The mental fatigue is so great, one family doctor said he knows of two colleagues in the city who have recently decided to leave the public health care system permanently and work in private medicine.

“What I hear on the ground is the burnout is palpable between physicians, between nurses, it is palpable,” said Dr. Mark Buch, 38, who runs a family medicine group (GMF) in Town of Mount-Royal and also works as a part-time emergency physician at the Jewish General Hospital.

Another GP even questions if the government’s actions of late: tabling Bill 11 that contains new regulations and recent disparaging comments about doctors’ work ethic are all part of a plan to allow more privatization to creep into Quebec’s health care system.

“Is that the intent of this manoeuvre, to make it so bad in Montreal that we start going to private doctors?" said Dr. Mark Roper, a family doctor who’s been practising in Montreal for the last 32 years.