This article originally appeared in the Summer 2022 issue of the Ontario Medical Review magazine.
An update to members on progress in 2022
Welcome to the summer of 2022. It has been a difficult winter and spring for physicians, and a period of continued change and transformation at the OMA. I hope you get some reprieve during the summer and fall amidst the ongoing physician shortage and burnout epidemic.
In March, members voted to ratify the Physician Services Agreement (PSA). Close to 72 per cent of you voted in favour of the OMA’s first-ever binding vote, a significant milestone in our transformational journey.
I am proud of the way our association and your board were able to mobilize to ensure members were well-informed before voting.
I want to give a special thank you to the Negotiations Task Force for their hard work, including chair Dr. Paul Tenenbein, vice-chair Dr. Hemant Shah, Dr. Nikolina Mizdrak, Dr. Patrick Conlon, Dr. Taylor Lougheed and our legal counsel Howard Goldbatt and Steven Barrett.
The important task ahead of us now is to deliver on the benefits to physicians through successful implementation of your new agreement.
Never has so much been asked of Ontario’s doctors since March 2020. I am very concerned about the effects that burnout is having on members.
Prior to the start of the pandemic, 29 per cent of Ontario’s doctors reported experiencing high levels of burnout. By March 2021, this number had increased to 35 per cent, with another three quarters experiencing some burnout.
The OMA released recommendations by the Burnout Task Force last year. We are committing to advancing these recommendations, and I am pleased to announce the Ontario government has agreed to form a bilateral working group to address the systemic issues that are contributing to burnout.
This table is important because burnout is a systems-level problem that must be addressed at the highest levels of government.
The pandemic has exposed significant gaps in health care. We released the Prescription for Ontario: Doctors’ 5-Point Plan for Better Health Care last year, a roadmap with 87 recommendations for improving our health-care system, with 12 specific recommendations to addressing challenges in northern Ontario.
Since its release, we’ve met with all provincial party leaders, the federal and provincial health ministers, and more than 40 MPPs to brief them on the plan. I want to thank the OMA’s Health-Care Advocates, physicians who answered the call during the provincial election to meet with their local candidates about the plan.
Just because the election is over does not mean we are going to stop relentlessly advocating for the adoption of our Prescription.
COVID has disrupted health care, placing new demands on physicians from patients, government budgets, technology and private sector entry. In the fall edition of the OMR, we’ll bring you stories about the future of health care in a post-pandemic environment, with ideas about how physicians can lead and thrive in this new era. Thank you for reading, it’s an honour to serve the physicians of Ontario.