Senior docs fight to keep billing nos.
Senior docs fight to keep billing nos.
The doctors say the forced cancellation of physician billing numbers contravenes the Charter of Rights forbidding discrimination on the basis of age. The others are Dr. Abram Hoffer, Dr. Alan Matthews, and Dr. George Thompson, all of Victoria, and Dr. L.C. Kindree of Squamish. The doctors have formed a society, Senior Physicians of British Columbia, which will ask that no physician lose a Medical Services Plan billing number before the challenge can be decided in court. The president of the British Columbia Medical Association, Dr. Jim Lane, said in 1996 the membership voted on and endorsed the recommendations of a provincial task force on physician supply, including the recommendaton on mandatory retirement of billing numbers. We believe there will be a physician supply shortage not too many years down the road.