Salaried doctors not pulling weight: health minister

P.E.I.'s health minister says some salaried doctors in the province aren't living up to expectations of how many patients they see each month.

"Health P.E.I. collects data on a monthly basis and we certainly have noticed that there were physicians that weren't up to full complement or capacity under the contract model," Carolyn Bertram told CBC News on Thursday.

Just before the legislature closed on Thursday, Opposition health critic Jim Bagnall asked Bertram about disciplinary memos sent to a number of salaried physicians in November and February.

"After a review, she sent out letters to doctors, basically telling them to shape up or ship out," Bagnall said.

He said he believes doctors working on a fee-for-service basis are seeing twice as many patients as those on a fixed government salary contract.

The salaried physicians are required to work 37.5 hours a week and have 1,500 patients. In their off hours, the doctors may also work in the province's clinics on a fee-for-service basis.

"Contract doctors are seeing very few patients in their office but they're going to walk-in clinics and for some mysterious reason, they see about three times the amount of patients in the same amount of time in the walk-in clinics than they do at their own office," said Bagnall.

About half of Prince Edward Island's doctors work on a salaried basis, but Bertram would not say how many of those physicians aren't living up to expectations in terms of meeting the appropriate patient load.

"We're looking at the stats. We're looking at how many people are on each salary contract doctor's patient load," she said.

Dr. Rachel Kassner, the president of the Medical Society of P.E.I., is one of the province's salaried doctors.

"There has been some suggestion that maybe we should increase our numbers but the majority of us are working to the maximum, I think, that is actually required," she told CBC News.

"There are a few that aren't."