Patients face deadline before records go overseas

Patients of Charlottetown doctor Robbie Coull, who recently closed his practice, need to find a doctor soon or face a fee to get their records before he returns to Scotland.

Patients who don't get their records before he leaves could face an even larger fee to have them shipped across the Atlantic.

Coull is charging patients $35 for a copy of their medical records, but said he will transfer files to another doctor for free. That fee came as a surprise to patient Marlene Hunt.

"In my mind those charts belong to the individual," said Hunt.

"My chart belongs to me and when I do have a new doctor here my chart will be going to him or her."

Coull said the $35 fee helps pay the cost of putting electronic records on a disk, but he will continue to transfer these files to other doctors for free.

He said he can't afford to provide them directly to patients without a charge.

"We have run out of money," said Coull.

"We don't have the ability to create large numbers of charts. It takes staff time, you have to pay the staff to do it. We have to pay for disks."

While Coull's practice is mostly shut down, he has been providing essential services for a few patients. That will end July 21 when he returns to his native Scotland. The office will remain open Mondays until October to allow patients to get test results. They will also be able to request their medical records during that time.

Hunt doesn't have a new family doctor yet, so she will have to pay. Finding a new doctor will be difficult. There were already thousands of people on a provincial registry looking for a doctor when Coull shut down his practice, adding another 4,500 people in need of a doctor.

Health PEI said it's acceptable for doctors to charge a reasonable amount for patient records in orderto cover overhead costs.