Thanks for the question.
In fact, we've just completed a study on this that is under peer review and we hope will be published relatively soon. In that study we looked only at family physicians, including family physicians who practise emergency medicine, but I suspect that the data for specialists will not be all that different. We did find, unsurprisingly, that physicians report quite a lot of time spent, and quite complex—what I think of as unnecessary—workarounds to try to get medicines for their patients.
The kinds of examples that I referred to in my presentation are not just anecdotal from my own practice, but come from qualitative research and from speaking to family physicians across the country who talk about the kinds of things that they have to do. They talk about giving patients samples and interacting with drug reps in order to get samples, changing the prescription that they're writing from the medicine that they think their patient actually needs to the one that they think their patient is actually going to be able to afford, applying on behalf of their patients for compassionate access through a pharmaceutical company for a medication that their patient can't afford, and just purchasing the medicine for the patients themselves. It's amazing how many physicians will report that at some point in their career they've done exactly that, just bought the medicine for the patient. Pharmacists, I know, report the same thing. You know the old story: “Don't worry, I'll just tell my boss that I dropped it on the floor and had to throw it out. Don't worry about it. Just take the pills home.”
There are all kinds of workarounds that are going on that well-meaning health care providers are engaging in across the country in order to try to get access to medicine for Canadians who need it. When you think about the wasted—never mind the wasted money—energy that it entails, that energy would be much better spent directed at patient care. I think it just adds to the importance of this conversation.