BY HEIDI ULRICHSEN
The president of the Sudbury and District Medical Society says he will be voting in favour of the Ontario government?s latest contract offer to the Ontario Medical Association (OMA).
Dr. Dennis Reich and 24,000 other Ontario doctors have the opportunity to participate in a non-binding phone-in referendum on the four-year contract between March 22 and 28. The governing council of the OMA will review the results before voting on the contract March 30.
The government has offered across-the-board pay increases of 2.5 percent for general and family practitioners, and two percent for specialists.
The increases are retroactive to April 1, 2004.
As well, billing thresholds will be eliminated, and doctors will be allowed to incorporate their practices.
An offer tabled in November was rejected by nearly 60 percent of OMA members.
Reich says he is voting in favour of the latest contract because he believes it?s a good deal, and because he and other Ontario doctors want labour peace.
?We need to ensure that all our resources are directed towards patient care. We could sit here and battle for another year or two years and ensure the government really does think about the future of health care in this province, but I don?t think that would be the best thing,? he says.
?There are no winners or losers in this contract...The biggest winner is the patient, because everyone stops squabbling, and everybody gets back to work.?
Sudbury pediatrician Dr. Vijay Kumar says he?s also voting in favour of the contract because doctors are unlikely to get a better deal.
?I find in the present economic climate, with the deficit and the way the health care budget is shrinking...it?s very difficult to get a better agreement.
You can?t bargain to the teeth. You?ve got to stop somewhere and say this is the best deal,? he says.
The last offer was rejected by the OMA partly because there were no up-front pay increases for doctors, he says. Kumar adds he isn?t upset family
doctors are getting slightly larger pay increases than he is as a specialist.
?If they (family doctors) have 1,000 complex cases on 10 or 15 different types of medications, having heart, kidney or arthritis problems, that is complicated medicine. So I think...they deserve it. My practice is much simpler. It?s just kids,? he says.
The pediatrician says the removal of the billing threshold doesn?t matter to him because he never makes that much money.
?It only affects a small minority of physicians in Ontario. So, it doesn?t really make a difference. I?m way below the cap,? he says.
Kumar won?t be taking advantage of new rules that would allow him to incorporate his practice. Incorporation is only good for physicians with large, complex practices, he says.
Dr. Pierre Bonin, a Sudbury family physician, is also in favour of the contract. The vote will be close, but in the end it will pass, he says.
?We?ve made some substantial gains, but I recognize that some of the specialties haven?t done as well as they should have. But if you ask me
personally how I was going to vote, I did fairly well with this (contract), so I will vote ?yes?,? he says.
Bonin thinks the pay increases might help to recruit and retain family physicians in the north. Right now, he says, doctors are discouraged from moving to Ontario because this province has the highest cost of living and the eighth lowest doctors? salaries in the country.
Bonin also thinks allowing doctors to incorporate is worthwhile because it brings Ontario in line with the rest of the country.
The government is hopeful the OMA will accept the contract because both sides have worked hard to find common ground, says MPP Peter Fonseca, parliamentary assistant to Health and Long-Term Care minister George Smitherman.
?Sometimes it?s a question of the right communication and the right understanding around the contract. I hope everything is clear today to the doctors of Ontario that we want them, and we need them,? he says.
Whatever happens, both the OMA and the government need to remember patients should always come first, says Fonseca.
?It?s about all our health care providers working together. If we don?t take our focus off the patient, we can?t go wrong.?
