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An official from the Laval clinic said no one was available to answer questions. The patient in question, Jean Pa-quite, was furious. We are already paying for this with our taxes, ‘That’s what’s frustrating." Ifs not the only controversial practice going on. Private clinics are pushing the boundaries in other ways. Physimed, are telling patients they have public-system family doctors accepting new patients — a rarity .They are trying to find ways to make a profit wherever they can here. The catch? Patients must first pay for a physical that involved a multiplicity of tests — blood, bone density, x-ray and the like. The cost at Physimed, according to a fiscal who answered the phone, was $460. You force the patient to pay to have access to services that are insured. "Strictly speaking, having to pay for insured services is prohibited by the province's health insurance act According to a professor of epidemiologist at McGill University, these types of practices are more t

MONTREAL -If, despite what they say, laws were not meant to be broken, in the case of private medical care in Quebec they were meant to be pushed to the brink or so it would appear, experts say, as private and semi-private clinics in and around Montreal find new ways to interpret the province’s health laws in order to bring in the cash. Quebec is at the forefoot of private health in Canada, and health and legal scholars say this '^bending" of laws is to be expected when a highly visible and vocal for-profit network sits at the margins of a vast and problem-plagued public system Quebec’s medical insurance agency says it has launched investigations into some newly discovered practices that it says might not conform with provincial laws or the Canada Health Act In one case, a private surgery clinic in Laval seems to have found a way to entice patients to be treated in its environs. The Critique chirurgical de Laval offered a man who needed bursitis surgery on his shoulder to

"PSWs are the most intimate point of contact for 75,000 elderly Ontarians living in go vernment-supported nursing homes, helping with everything from feeding to toileting." While these Long-Term Care (LTC - not 'nursing homes' - there are fewer nurses) are homes run on government support, most (about 500 out of the 600 in Ontario) are for-profit institutions. Thereby lies the rub. And regulation of retirement homes isn't going to help. We need consistently trained, responsive, responsible PSWs who are accountable, registered and regulated. I am not sure that the training is entirely the issue, either. It is making the for-profit institutions accountable to taxpayers and residents for effectively-managed staff. The work formerly done by nurses is now being done by PSWs: changing bedding, changing incontinence products, toileting of incontinent residents, which requires a great deal of intimate interaction. Rumours of for-profit institutions demanding t