Canadian Doctors Turn Away Patients Action To Protest Salary Cap, Cutback On Fees

Disgruntled Ontario doctors have begun turning away new patients to protest government cutbacks and restrictions affecting medical care in the province.

Groups representing about 10,000 family doctors urged their members to refuse new patients starting Friday. A coalition of 7,000 specialists also called for doctors to treat only emergency and cancer patients.

There were no immediate estimates of how many doctors actually turned away patients.

The doctors are protesting a 10-percent cutback on their fees, salary caps, a cut in the province’s subsidy of malpractice insurance and a plan to force new doctors to work in remote areas where there are shortages of physicians.

The health minister, Jim Wilson, asked the College of Physicians and Surgeons to consider filing professional misconduct charges against doctors who join the protest.