Quebec doctors will keep government overpayments
Overpayments of $416.7 million made to Quebec doctors over the last five years cannot be recovered, according to Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard.
The payments were given in return for patient services that have already been provided and those services cannot be undone, according to Couillard, who made the comments Sunday in Paris where he is attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
The overpayments were brought to light by Quebec Auditor General Guylaine Leclerc, whose report suggested that the province had lost control of payments made to doctors.
Between 2010 and 2015, specialists billed the province $384 million more than it had budgeted for, while general practitioners billed $32.7 million more than what Quebec had expected to pay them, according to the report issued Friday.
The government money will remain in those doctors' pockets but Couillard said Health Minister Gaétan Barrette will focus on ways to rectify the situation so it will not happen again.
Too few audits
The report also criticized the provincial public health insurance agency, Régie de l'assurance maladie du Québec (RAMQ), for not doing enough to try to detect fraud or billing errors — even though physicians' remuneration amounts to 62 per cent of RAMQ's expenses.
Of Quebec's 17,542 physicians, only two per cent have had their billings audited, and in most cases, that was for a single act or procedure, according to the report. Physicians bill RAMQ for 55 million acts annually.
Leclerc concluded that current arrangements leave the medical system vulnerable to error or fraud.
