Ontario doctors have walked away from negotiations with the province. Their contract expired at the end of March 2014. Photo: Alain Jocard, AFP/Getty Images Ontario’s doctors have pulled the plug on their ongoing contract negotiations with the provincial government.
The province’s physician services agreement sets out fees and other compensation structures for doctors (some general practitioners, for example, are paid per patient not visit) expired at the end of March 2014. Since then, Ontario’s doctors have been operating under the approximately $11-billion a year deal the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) signed in December 2012.
For context, that’s about 8.5 per cent of the province’s $130-billion budget.
“Patients can’t wait for the government to balance its budget. They deserve care when and where they need it,” OMA President Dr. Ved Tandan said in a press conference Thursday.
The 2012 round of negotiations also briefly fell apart, but the doctors eventually came back to the table and struck a deal that both curbed costs, as deficit-strapped Ontario required, and made pledges to improve patient care, through new initiatives like a revival of house calls. After those cuts, Tandan said in a statement, doctors aren’t willing to take another cut, despite the fact Ontario still has yet to tackle a $12.5-billion deficit.
He said the doctors have offered another two-year freeze on its fees but the government is seeking cuts. He said the government offer amounts to a four-per-cent cut to patient services.
Health Minister Eric Hoskins told reporters he was “disappointed” by the OMA’s decision to walk away from table. He also said the average doctor makes over $360,000 a year and dozens in Ontario make millions a year. He said they can afford a freeze, and trims to bonuses for things like walk-in clinic work, when the province is facing such large financial troubles.
“We understand and acknowledge the economic challenges the government is facing,” Vandan said, adding a freeze is “the right thing to do.”
“The government’s offer will cover less than half” of what’s required for more doctors for a growing and aging population, new patients expected in the system and other growing demands, Tandan said. He said there are significant pressures on the system, wait lists in some keys areas and a dearth of hospital beds and “the government cuts will make things worse.”
“In Ontario we already have too few doctors to treat out current population… while we have made great strides, based on the government’s own data there are still 900,000 people who are ‘unattached’ in the system, meaning they are without the care of a family doctor,” Vandan said.
In December, a conciliator issued a report to try to bring the two sides together but that failed. Hoskins said the OMA never brought him a counter offer and that conciliation, former Ontario Chief Justice Warren Winkler, sided with the government. Winkler also recommended doctor’s billings to the province under OHIP be made public, to which the OMA bristled.
The OMA represents over 34,000 doctors and medical students across Ontario at the provincial bargaining table but it is not a formal union.
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