Author: Recording Secretary

Have You Been Charged Fees for Health Care? Please contact the Globe & Mail as per the email below:

The Globe and Mail is working on a big, in-depth project, to connect with anyone in Canada who has paid $$ out of their own pocket for necessary medical care or services – for themselves or their loved ones – in the last five years.

Our goal is to get positive action/change from provincial and federal governments

To get there, we first need to document growing practices like double billing for same procedure (Eg. doctor charging patient for immediate consult then doing surgery in public hospital; charging patients for facility fees but charging province for surgery etc), extra billing (where you must pay extra fees to be a patient or get basic services like phone calls etc. from your clinic) and overbilling (where you must pay for specific, extra uninsured services like tests, counselling etc, before the doctor will treat your condition).

We can’t make this happen unless we hear from the people most affected – patients – so we can then reveal how prevalent the practices are.

Please email me in confidence at ktomlinson@globeandmail.com  We will only include your experience in our story if you agree to participate.

I’d dearly love to hear from you regardless.

(my bio and examples of work are here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/authors/kathy-tomlinson )

Thanks!

Kathy Tomlinson

Investigative reporter, Globe and Mail

(604) 349-7904