In her retirement, Valerie Vaughan-Hines enjoys bird-watching from her porch and looking for a pair of bald eagles that have nested across the lake from her home in Mount Uniacke, N.S. But lately, the 65-year-old has been spending a lot more time than she wants to looking for a family doctor.

Skip to 1:10:48

It's bad enough to learn you're losing your family doctor, says one Nova Scotia woman, but being asked to pay hundreds of dollars to access years of medical records adds insult to injury. "We have already enough distress right now knowing that we're losing our family doctor," says Cornelia Schneider. "So on top of that, [to] have to pay … is really upsetting." Schneider learned her physician was closing her practice in the north end of Halifax in a letter earlier this month.