The New Brunswick Medical Society (NBMS) says doctors providing services through N.B. Health Link can earn similar fees from Medicare as they do in their clinics but without the same paperwork headaches, which makes it less attractive for them to maintain conventional family practices. The Society warns the situation will only get worse without changes and predicts the number of New Brunswickers without family doctors could surge past 100,000 for the first time before the end of the year. The NBMS is urging the province to:
- Increase billing fees for doctors who take on more patients in their clinics and who add evening hours to their offices; and
- Allow doctors to bill Medicare for services that nurses provide in their clinics and for the time they spend on paperwork and other administrative tasks.
The New Brunswick Health Council also warned in 2022 that the growth of the new services, while positive, risked spreading doctors too thin. The provincial government rejected the suggestion to increase billable hours, saying it won’t help because there are too many other issues in the system.