Ontario negotiating doctor salary increases amid reported family doctor shortage

How much should doctors be paid? That question under debate right now by the Ministry of Health and the Ontario Medical Association. And this conversation comes as some experts have been sounding the alarm over a reported shortage of family doctors in our province. For more, we are joined now by Doctor Dominic Novak, the president of the OMA. Thank you so much for coming in today. Melanie. Thanks for having me. Before we get into the arbitration, that is a bigger conversation, let’s talk about the situation. What realistically is the situation when it comes to Ontarians having a family physician? It’s not good. So if you think of the people that need a family doctor and can’t find one, that’s one in five people in Ontario right now and it’s about to get worse. In the next two years, it’s projected to be one in four. That means people are using the emergency rooms, using hospitals that are already overflowing, can’t get the care they need. People are worried, People are scared, they’re suffering because of the situation that we’re in right now. And it’s clear we have a healthcare system that’s in crisis. We’ve heard from the Ministry of Health saying, you know, not speaking to the arbitration, but saying, you know, the situation’s under control. We are investing, we are investing. What do you make of any of those comments? Yeah, let me tell you what a what a system in crisis looks like. Just a while ago I was meeting with someone who hasn’t been able to find a family doctor for over 7 years. They’ve been bouncing around emergency rooms, hospitals, walk in clinics, just like many people do. Actually, 2.3 million in Ontario alone, soon to be one in four people, and we recently set them up with a family doc. We got their cancer screening up to date. We got their care up to date. But heartbreakingly, we found a completely preventable, serious cancer diagnosis in terms of breast cancer. And this is the living nightmare for people in Ontario right now where they can’t find care, they’re getting care late and they’re living through the situation where they’re they can’t get the care that they deserve. And they’re suffering, they’re worried and they’re they’re experiencing this. This is not a new experience for us here. Many people don’t know where to turn to. So the province, we understand offering doctors a 3% wage increase over the next year, the organization asking for 5%. How much of a difference will that make? It’s about preparing a healthcare system that’s in crisis and repairing a healthcare system that’s in crisis. What we’re seeing is that doctors are feeling the crunch doctors, If you think of your family doctor’s office, for example, they have to pay for overhead expenses, they have to pay for the nursing staff, the receptionist, the technology, everything like that. And my colleagues are feeling crunched with runaway inflation, runaway costs, funding that just hasn’t kept up over the last few years. And it’s no surprise that you see newspaper headlines almost every week of family doctors closing shop because they can’t make the math work. And because of that, patients are suffering. That’s why one in five right now can’t find a family doctor. And again, soon to be one in four unless we do something right now. So the something right now, there are conversations right now in arbitration. We should tell our City News 24/7 viewers that we did invite the Minister of Health, Sylvia Jones, to join us here on the program. They did decline. They did refer us, though, to a statement that was made at Queens Park yesterday. So we’re going to play a snippet of that for you. I’m not going to insert myself into the arbitration discussions that are happening right now. What I say to you is that we have seen through our investments that we’re going to continue to work with physicians, with all clinicians in the province of Ontario to make sure that the patients get the appropriate access, OK. So Sylvia Jones saying they’re going to ensure patients get the appropriate access in arbitration. We’ve heard, they’ve said recruitment and retention of doctors in Ontario is not a major concern. So everything that you have said and then what we have heard from Sylvia Jones, very different stories. How do you react to to these words? Here’s what I’m hearing from my colleagues on the ground. It’s hard to keep their doors open. It’s hard to give people the care they deserve. We want to do the care. Doctors want to do the care. It’s getting more difficult as our population ages as the medicine becomes more complex as inflation is added on to all of that. And what we need right now is repair and healthcare system that I hope one day we could be proud of again. How confident are you that these conversations are going to be positive for the OMA? You know I’m I’m an optimist. Optimism means realism. It’s accepting what the situation is right now but it’s also hope it’s getting to a brighter future and having the solutions. We know it needs to be done. We have the solutions in terms of what our healthcare system needs. OK. We will continue to follow this Doctor Dominic Novak, the President of the OMA. Appreciate your time. Thank you so much. My pleasure.