Private clinic to offer care for $2,900 per year

Alberta's health minister says he's not concerned that another private clinic is setting up shop in Calgary this fall.

The Copeman Healthcare Centre plans to open a medical facility with labs, fitness assessments, a rehabilitation centre, and an "advanced preventive cardiology clinic" on Sept. 8 at 5th Street and 12th Avenue S.W.

For a fee of $3,900 in the first year, and $2,900 every year after, patients get a health plan designed by a health-care team that includes doctors, nurses, registered dieticians and kinesiologists.

Patients can see a family physician at the clinic for a service covered under medicare,which is then billed to the government.

Theclinics don't contravene the Canada Health Act because they don't charge patients for medically necessary services, said CEO Don Copeman.

The centre opened its first clinic in Vancouver in November 2007 to criticism that the annual fees buy special access to doctors.

An audit of the Vancouver clinic by B.C.'s Medical Services Commission found it did not violate any provincial or federal laws because it was not charging extra for enhanced services.

No Alberta review of clinic

"The findings were that there was no contravention of the Canada Health Act so I wouldn't be proposing to do any kind of review," Alberta Health Minister Ron Liepert said Wednesday.

There should be little need for such clinics if Alberta makes necessary changes to its publicly funded health-care system, he said.

Liepert introduced plans Wednesday to overhaul regional health boards and authorities as a part of changes to make Alberta's medicare more accessible and accountable.

The minister's hands-off reaction to the clinic did not impress Avalon Roberts, a Calgary spokeswoman of Friends of Medicare.

"Is this really the way we want to go, where people who have an extra $3,000 to spend can go to the front of the line and everybody else can fall where they may?" Roberts said.

"Really, what we need to do, which must be emphasized again and again, is to educate enough of our own young people to provide the care that we need."

Non-members must have access to doctors

Similar clinics have been operating in Calgary. Alberta's College of Physicians and Surgeons ruled two years ago thatthey cannot charge patients for services covered by medicare.

Spokeswoman Kelly Eby said the college is checking that Copeman meets basic rules, such as allowing people who do not pay themembership feeto access the clinic's doctors.

"Physicians are not allowed to charge a fee for simply being available to patients,"she toldCBC News. "If the fee isn't mandatory, then it's OK, but if the clinic won't accept patients who are unwilling to sign up for all of the uninsured services then that's not OK."

Copeman's expansion plans include a Toronto location in 2009 and eventually, nine other clinics across Canada.