2023-04-26 04:00:00
Two medical specialists plan to stop traveling to the Magdalen Islands due to frequently canceled or postponed flights; a frustration shared by many patients when it comes time to seek treatment on the continent.
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The CISSS des Îles affirms that the difficulties of ensuring reliable air transport now has a direct impact on the care provided in its facilities.
“Uncertainty about arrivals and departures leads to dissatisfaction both among our customers and among our medical specialists. Two doctors told us about their questions about maintaining their practice in the archipelago in the face of the uncertainty linked to air transport,” says Dr Jean-François Bellemare, Acting Director of Professional and Hospital Services.
Its management “is actively working with the various actors involved in the file in order to avoid the loss of our precious workforce”, he adds in a written statement.
A “sick”
Air Canada has abandoned a dozen regional routes in 2020 and only serves the Islands in the summer, during the most profitable season. The Madelinots therefore had to rely on Pascan, but its fleet was being renewed and often had to be repaired.
And the plan unveiled last year by the Legault government to subsidize $500 tickets has had little effect in improving the situation, according to many regional players.
According to our information, a psychiatrist specializing in addiction plans to throw in the towel after seven years of serving the islanders. Despite our requests, he preferred not to testify, so as not to discourage colleagues.
The only ophthalmologist on the Islands, Dr. Chantal Delorme, has also decided to reduce her professional activities from 2024.
“I’m going through hell, she confided recently to the JE show. It creates enormous stress on me, a lot of frustration, a lot of feeling of powerlessness in front of my patients. Dr. Delorme declined to comment for this article.
Generalized problem
“All the specialists who have to travel to the Islands experience these schedule changes, these postponements, these delays, suffer loss of income, loss of time, change of appointments”, confided the PQ MP Joël Arseneau on April 6, after denouncing the situation again at the Blue Room.
The observation also applies to patients: the CISSS must assume some 7,000 flights annually for users treated on the mainland or staff members.
Member of Parliament for the Magdalen Islands, Joël Arseneau himself bears the cost of this random service: in the face of delays and postponements, he sometimes ends up staying in Quebec, rather than returning to his riding, when the work adjourns. Thursday afternoon.
“Once, I paid $250 for a taxi” to go back and forth several times between his apartment in the Capitale-Nationale and the airport, where his flight was postponed, he says.
“With the job I have, it’s not an issue, the taxi. But there are people who are in the hospital, who come from the Islands, who have been there for three days or three weeks, they are discharged and they are going through the same thing as me,” illustrates Joël Arseneau.
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