Revisions to Bill 2 may spare some family medicine clinics from closure

Some of the clinics that were set to close due to Bill 2 will remain open but not all of them.

Many of the family medicine clinics that had threatened to close in part because of the controversial doctors’ bill may ultimately not have to shut down.

One of those clinics is the Hudson Medical Center, the only one in the Hudson area, that was set to close on April 1. Residents said losing access to the only available care would have been devastating for the community.

But now that the Quebec government has agreed to revise parts of Bill 2 — including implementing a new tagging system, volume-based performance metrics and a significantly larger patient target — family doctors say the clinic could be saved.

“We’ve postponed closing, and we’ll see if that deal actually becomes law,” said Dr. Christopher Forrest, a family physician at Hudson Medical Center.

The law is set to take effect on Feb. 28.

Forrest noted that the bill, as introduced, would have forced doctors to practise medicine in a way that would have been not only inconvenient for patients but “fundamentally” unsafe.

The revision will also allow ELNA Pediatrics’ Tiny Tots clinic in Decarie Square — which sees 150,000 patients a year — to stay open.

However, some clinics told CTV News they are still closing because of Bill 2, including the children’s clinic Santé Kildare, which has pushed its closure date to the end of May.

Others said they will wait and see.

“Will we have the means to continue? We certainly hope so. And we think that there is actually a strong effort, this time by the government, to sit down, to find a common solution that benefits not just the doctors and the patients, but the clinics themselves,” said Dr. Michael Kalin, the medical director of GMF Santé Kildare.

In Hudson, Forrest — although now optimistic — said irreparable damage has been done, as one of the clinic’s physicians has decided to leave the country and two others remain undecided.

He added that he is also worried about who will run the clinics that do stay open, and whether Quebec medical residents will choose family medicine.