Dr. Matthew Donlan has a simple solution to a problem of Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec\u2019s own creation. He has found a way to pair children with pediatricians almost from birth, whereby families who need primary care for their babies can effectively bypass the Guichet d\u2019acc\u00e8s \u00e0 un m\u00e9decin de famille (GAMF).<\/p>\n
The Montreal West resident has been a pediatrician for nearly 15 years, with experience as a pediatric intensivist in Montreal, Toronto, Quebec City, and Ottawa. \u201cIt really allowed me to understand the healthcare system from primary care all the way through to tertiary coronary care.\u201d<\/p>\n
A blind-spot of the GAMF, he says, is that babies do not get a RAMQ (R\u00e9gie de l\u2019assurance maladie du Qu\u00e9bec) number until about two months after birth, past the point where they should have had their first pediatric visit. Donlan says Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec is working on it, \u201cbut historically children have been forgotten on the GAMF.\u201d<\/p>\n
As one-time head of the MCH (Montreal Children\u2019s Hospital) Pediatric Consult Centre, Donlan observed that too many children with health issues were being sent home without proper follow up \u2014 patients who \u201ceasily could have gotten taken care of closer to their home.\u201d They needed community-based primary care, Donlan says, but \u201cwe didn\u2019t really have anywhere to send them. We weren\u2019t really tapping into the resources, the capacity for community pediatrics.\u201d<\/p>\n
Donlan created a database of Quebec pediatricians. Based on the patients\u2019 postal codes, he would be able to redirect them to pediatricians closer to their homes. It sounds elementary to those who grew up in a time when children had pediatricians from birth. But to those living through a time when nearly two million Quebecers do not have a family doctor, and up to 20 percent of babies do not have a pediatrician \u2014 and the GAMF wait time is upwards of three years \u2014 it sounds unreal.<\/p>\n
\u201cHistorically, we had these titans of pediatrics in Montreal,\u201d Donlan says, listing off names of well-known doctors that saw thousands of children in their practices. The current division of care, he says, is a lot less efficient. And Quebec has far more family physicians than pediatricians.<\/p>\n
Between 2022 and 2025, as the precursor to what Donlan calls Care for All Kids, \u201cwe were up to 4,000-plus consults that we\u2019ve rediverted to the community.\u201d About four years ago, 50 to 60 per cent of babies leaving the MCH did not have a primary care physician. But when contacted just two months later, Donlan tells The Suburban, 85 per cent had access to primary care. \u201cThis didn\u2019t feel unsolvable to me anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2024, he partnered with clinics in Centre-Ouest, sending babies born at the Royal Victoria Hospital to clinics in the area. That expanded the following year. \u201cNow every single baby that\u2019s born at the Vic is given the opportunity to have a family doctor before they go home.\u201d<\/p>\n
The goal is \u201cto have Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec and the government and family doctors recognize that babies do need to have primary care.\u201d Last December the family doctors\u2019 federation (FMOQ) signed an agreement to take on 500,000 new patients, removing them from the waiting list.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need to make sure that the kids aren\u2019t forgotten,\u201d he says. \u201cI have a blueprint for success. I just need Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec to reach out so I can show it to them. At our hospital alone I was able to save $7 million a year. It\u2019s a very simple solution to what is thought to be a very complicated problem but is in reality a very solvable problem.\u201d n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr. Matthew Donlan has a simple solution to a problem of Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec\u2019s own creation. He has found…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3661,3653,3651,2128,3659,3654,3655,3657,50,3652,3650,3656,3660,3658],"class_list":{"0":"post-6150","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-montreal","8":"tag-childhood","9":"tag-clinical-medicine","10":"tag-family-medicine","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-health-care","13":"tag-health-sciences","14":"tag-medical-specialties","15":"tag-medicine","16":"tag-montreal","17":"tag-pediatrics","18":"tag-primary-care","19":"tag-public-services","20":"tag-social-policy","21":"tag-social-programs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}