Quebec family doctors federation and government reach tentative agreement

A tentative agreement has been reached between Quebec and family physicians regarding the guichet d’accès à la première ligne – known as the GAP.

The Fédération des médecins omnipraticiens du Québec (FMOQ) posted to social media late in the day Thursday to confirm the news. They write that, “the big winners are you, the population.”

The full details of the agreement are not know yet known and the FMOQ says they won’t reveal anything further until they present it to their members – expected to happen on Friday.

Health Minister Christian Dubé posted that the progress made with the “gateway agreement for the GAP” will make it possible to preserve “certain important principles,” notably collective registration.

For her part, Quebec’s Treasury Board President, Sonia LeBel, wrote that the agreement will make it possible to maintain care for more than 900,000 patients.

“The work is not finished: now we will devote our energy to negotiating the renewal of the framework agreement,” she added.

By 2022, Mr. Dubé and the FMOQ had agreed that family medicine groups (FMGs) would take on patients without a family doctor. An annual premium of $120 was paid for each patient registered with an FMG through the GAP.

But this agreement expired on May 31, and the two parties were unable to agree on new terms for renewing the GAP.

This dispute has had consequences for patients. The number of appointments offered on GAP fell from 17,604 in the week of May 18 to 1,133 for the week of June 9.

The GAP program was launched in 2022.

–With files from La Presse Canadienne translated by CityNews