CEO Update

Ontarians all owe you, Ontario’s doctors, a huge debt of gratitude for the leadership and care you provide every day. In particular, I want to highlight the dedication and sacrifice many of you have made on the frontline during the COVID-19 public health crisis.

Many of you have spent the last few months working long hours away from your families, in both hospitals and community clinics, to get the province through this pandemic. You have done this at great risk and sacrifice.

Many of you have also faced uncertainty over your own practice and financial hardship as non-essential services came to a halt.

One of the Ontario Medical Association’s key pillars is improving membership satisfaction and engagement through improved value to members. To that end, the OMA has been focusing on providing relentless advocacy and support on your behalf throughout this crisis.

The OMA spent the last year purposefully aligning and integrating the organization so that we can execute against our key objectives:

• Increase value for Membership;
• Bring clarity of role and Mandate through governance transformation;
• Manage challenging and often adversarial policy issues with government; and
• Modernize the OMA to be an effective and productive member-focused Association.

We began preparing for COVID-19 in January, when it became clear the virus might become a serious public health issue for Ontario. A cross-functional team began meeting to prepare for all contingencies and started working with members, government and organizations across the health care spectrum to be a part of meeting the challenge. Since then, the OMA has:

• Been a consistent and strong advocate for the need for personal protective equipment (PPE) for physicians in both hospital and community settings.
• Identified critical shortages of PPE across the province through a real-time survey and helped match that need with supply to help keep clinics open.
• Negotiated codes for virtual care via telephone and video to enable physicians to continue billing and seeing patients.
• Negotiated a time-based compensation model to promote the recruitment and flexible deployment of physicians and physician skills where they were needed in the face of a potential surge in hospitals.
• Kept members up-to-date in real-time with Member Alerts and President’s Updates.
• Held regular, widely attended, virtual townhalls with experts on topics like infectious disease, financial supports for both provincial and federal financial programs, mental health for physicians, and interpretations of billing and various negotiation issues. In addition, we shared information and training on physician business continuity, legal questions, guidance on PPE, non-essential services, duty of care, palliative care and long-term care.
• Created a dedicated COVID-19 section on the OMA Website, that contains a wealth of resources and information for physicians.
• Launched a public-facing website, https://www.askontariodoctors.ca/virusfacts, to help keep the public informed about COVID-19 and stop the spread of misinformation. As of late April, virusfacts.ca has had more than 200,000 views from Ontarians.
• Launched public service announcements about physical distancing and hand washing in print, radio, television, billboards and online.
• Supported COVID-19 assessment centres with guidelines, materials, an interactive map, and a list of volunteers.
• Launched a physician-matching service, BookJane, to help meet sudden surges of health human resources demand by connecting interested physicians with hospitals and clinics who need them.
• Finally, we have worked literally across the health care system with virtually every stakeholder group to align as best we could and co-ordinate our efforts.

At the time of writing this message in early May, the OMA has been making a strong case to government that it must invest in the sustainability of all health care infrastructure in Ontario. Thousands of clinics are at risk of closing right now because of the government’s flawed payment model. The offer of advance payments to clinics is simply unacceptable and does not serve frontline physicians, their employees, or their patients. Doctors are asking only to be treated in the same way as other vital public services.

In my last column in the January/February edition of the Ontario Medical Review, I wrote about the OMA’s 2020 objectives and how we will achieve them. While a significant amount of our Association’s time has been spent on COVID-19, we are continuing to identify and drive the long-term key objectives I described to you. Our number one objective remains improving the lives of physicians and making you proud of your membership in the OMA.

I continue to be inspired by the membership to keep disrupting what is not working to better serve our members. On behalf of all the staff at the OMA, thank you for everything you are doing to help save lives during this pandemic. It is an honour to serve you.

Allan O’Dette

OMA Chief Executive Officer