The government wants to claw back the pay of some family doctors
it says are averaging $400,000 for part-time hours
Doctors warn if they’re hit with another pay cut patients will end up paying the price.
The provincial government wants to claw back how much it pays thousands of Ontario family doctors and force them to put in longer hours, arguing they are averaging $400,000-plus annually for what amounts to part-time work.
Doctors are up in arms over the proposals and charge that the government has got it wrong when it comes to their workload. They warn if they are hit with another pay cut — on top of one imposed four years ago as well as an ongoing compensation freeze — patients will pay the price because family physicians will be driven from the field.
“I’m worried that the deep cuts being proposed will make it near impossible for people to find a family doctor, and that will have repercussions for the whole health system,” family doctor Tara Kiran, vice chair of quality and innovation in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto, wrote in an email.
The two sides have been arguing their cases before a board of arbitration, which completed seven months of hearings Sunday. The Ontario Medical Association contends the government has built its case upon faulty findings by the provincial auditor.
The arbitration board is tasked with resolving an almost-five-year-old contract dispute between the government and the OMA, which represents the province’s 31,000 practising physicians.