New legislation in Ontario will give health-care professionals wider powers

The Ontario government is introducing legislation on Monday that it said will help to reduce wait times for patients.

Premier Dalton McGuinty said the new bill will let nurse practitioners, physiotherapists and pharmacists do things only doctors can do now.

Under the legislation, nurse practitioners will be able to do ultrasounds, set casts and prescribe certain drugs beyond the ones they can already prescribe. Physiotherapists will be able to order X-rays, midwives can take blood samples and pharmacists will be allowed to renew prescriptions.

McGuinty said 50 per cent of what a family doctors does can be done by someone else.

"It will free up doctors to those kinds of things only doctors can do — and there are a number of things doctors are doing on their own that we think other health-care practitioners can do as well," he said.

Ontario Health Minister David Caplan called the new rules "momentous."

Doris Grinspun, the head of the Ontario Registered Nurses' Association, disagreed.

Grinspun said the legislation lags behind what nurses can do in other jurisdictions in North America.

She said her members should be able to prescribe all drugs and admit and discharge patients from hospitals.