Ontario’s doctors have a new, four-year agreement with the province that will give them increased general compensation and see family doctors paid for administrative work, which they and the government hope can improve access to care.
An arbitrator had earlier awarded doctors a nearly 10 per cent compensation increase for the first year of their four-year Physician Services Agreement, and the parties went back to the table to discuss the remaining three years.
The arbitrator has now awarded them an additional 7.3 per cent over the three years, plus top-ups for certain groups including doctors at children’s hospitals.
The Ministry of Health said in a statement that the arbitration award also includes investments that will help incentivize doctors to take on new patients and strengthen incentives for after-hours care.
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The Ontario Medical Association said that an updated Family Health Organization model they’ve agreed to with the government will include pay for time spent on administration and better compensation for complex patients, which will help with family doctor recruitment and retention.
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Dr. Zainab Abdurrahman, president of the OMA, said all of the changes should have more physicians looking at family medicine as a good option.
“We had a lot of people who were questioning or hesitating really committing to setting up a full family practice, and now seeing this model, we’re hoping that they will see that this is something that is financially viable,” she said.
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“(Compensation has) been lagging, and because of that, we were getting people who were not setting up practice because they said, ‘This isn’t financially viable. I can’t run an office. How am I going to pay all my staff if I’m not adequately compensated?’”
The OMA says 2.5 million people in Ontario do not have a family doctor, while the government says Ontario has the highest rate in the country of people attached to a primary care provider.
In an interim step while discussions for the three-year portion of the deal were ongoing, Ontario committed to introduce a new program to stabilize physician staffing in rural emergency departments and put more money toward helping people in underserved communities get access to primary care.
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