After 43 years in the trenches of general practice, I applaud the fortitude and wisdom of the Pemberton clinic physicians billing employers $50 when a patient requests a note for time loss due to illness. This is proactive and insightful. Hopefully, it is the foot in the door and may precede changes in other intrusions into the GP’s office that are beyond the doctor’s control and invoked by government, lawyers, and the College of Physicians and Surgeons. This includes the medico-legal octopus of ICBC claims, with unnecessary office visits and suffocating requests for chart copies and reports (the bane of practice!), stringent opiate-prescribing guidelines, and extensions of the statute of limitations to 15 years—for many, beyond their death. 

Where is the carrot for new MDs planning a family medicine career?
—John Albrecht, MD
Burnaby