Legault reaches out to doctors, asks them to show openness
Posted May 12, 2025 6:04 pm.
François Legault is reaching out to family doctors, inviting them to join the negotiating table. He hopes they will be open to changing the way they are paid.
According to the Quebec premier, this shift is essential to ensure “every Quebecer has access to care.” So far, he senses “resistance to change,” which explains why he said last week that “things are going to get rough” with the Fédération des médecins omnipraticiens du Québec (FMOQ).
“We’ll never have an effective health-care network if we don’t have a strong front line. … To achieve this, just about all the specialists are coming to the conclusion that we need to change the way they are paid. At present, family doctors are paid on a fee-for-service basis. What we would like is for part of their payment to be by capitation,” Legault told a press scrum in Nicolet on Monday, after attending an awards ceremony for police officers and citizens at the École nationale de police.
Capitation is a payment model where doctors receive a set fee per patient, rather than being paid per visit or procedure.
“What I want is for the FMOQ and others to sit down with us and find solutions for Quebecers and patients. We’re not doing this to be at war with the doctors, we’re doing this for the patients,” he added, stressing that he hoped for “a negotiated agreement with the two doctors’ unions.”
Having been through this before, Legault is expecting heated debates.
“I said it’s going to get rough because I’ve seen it myself — I was health minister for a year. I know it’s not easy to negotiate with the FMOQ. I know the FMOQ hasn’t shown much openness to changing the compensation model,” he stated.
He said that, over the past 20 years, every government has tried to change the way doctors are paid, but “they have always backed down at the last minute because they were afraid of the pressure tactics from the doctors.”
The premier appeared to assure that the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) will succeed where the Liberals and the Parti Québécois have failed. “All governments have failed, but we will not back down and we will succeed for Quebecers,” he promised.
As things stand, Legault believes there is “a huge problem.” He believes that “half the cases in emergency departments are minor problems that should have been dealt with in a clinic, in a CLSC, on the front line, by a family doctor.”
Last Thursday, Health Minister Christian Dubé tabled Bill 106, which proposes a mixed compensation model that would include capitation, fee-for-service and hourly billing.
Currently, the law only allows doctors to be paid on a fee-for-service basis, which, according to the CAQ, does not encourage collaborative working or the management of complex and heavy cases.
“If we stay with just fee-for-service payments, there is no end to the number of procedures; we can treat colds all day long, but we won’t get to the bottom of Quebecers‘ major problems,” Legault said on Wednesday.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
