Dr. Douglas Mark

Like most of my colleagues, I didn’t enter the field of medicine to become rich and famous. I entered medical school for one reason and one reason only – I wanted to help people. Unfortunately, the Liberal government here in Ontario is making it harder and harder for me to do so. That’s because after a year of negotiating with the Ontario Medical Association, the government has decided to impose a deal on doctors – reducing fees significantly – and cutting some $580 million from our healthcare budget.

To make matters worse, the Liberals are trying to imply that the reason they had to make these moves is because they’ve given doctors a 61 per cent salary increase over the past decade. Doctors have received no such increase.
Why would the government do this? In a word, politics.

The province’s finances are out of control, and the Liberals have decided they need to find a scapegoat to blame this mess on.

Is it fair to blame doctors for overutilizing our health-care resources? Not at all. Ontario doctors have worked very hard over the past 10 years – making many personal sacrifices – so that waiting lists in five key areas could be reduced. We also helped the government find family doctors for over one million Ontarians who didn’t have one.

And yet, after all this, the government has chosen to turn around and blame us for going over their healthcare budget.

Truth is, it’s the Liberals who deserve the blame for the decision to ration health care. They’re the ones who decided to impose a deal on doctors instead of negotiating one. Now, instead of being able to co-manage our health-care system along with the government, doctors have been relegated to the sidelines, where we’ll be forced to watch politicians who think they know it all really make a mess of things.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care a medical doctor, too? Yes, he is. Unfortunately, he’s not the one calling the shots here. These harmful decisions are being made exclusively by Premier Kathleen Wynne and former health minister Deb Matthews, in her new role as Treasury Board president. Dr. Hoskins is merely their puppet.

So what do doctors intend to do about all this?

Simple. We plan on educating our patients as to what is really behind the government’s move to cut $580 million out of our health-care system. We can’t go on strike – nor would we – but we can engage in some rather creative job actions.

Starting March 2 family doctors will be asked to set an egg timer or stopwatch for five minutes as soon as each patient enters their office and sits down.
Specialists will set the clock for 10 to 25 minutes, depending on the specialty. Once the time is up, doctors will inform patients that the government is no longer paying the doctor – even though the patient will likely be taking up another 10 minutes or more of their time – and that the cost of the rest of the visit will be borne by each individual doctor.

This symbolic act is meant to dramatize the fact that OHIP only covers 47 per cent of the Ontario Medical Association’s recommended fee schedule, which the Liberals have chosen to cut by another 2.65 per cent as of Feb. 1. Doctors will also be asked to download a form from the DoctorsOntario website, asking the government if they feel they can afford the patient’s visit.

The doctor will explain what the patient’s problem is on the form, as well as writing down the treatment they’re suggesting. The form will then be faxed to either the premier’s office, the Treasury Board president’s office, or the health minister’s office, requesting approval from someone at Queen’s Park to go ahead and bill OHIP.

Each patient’s identifiers will be blacked out on the form.

The reason we’ll be doing this, of course, is because doctors are concerned that as a result of these cuts, and the Liberals’ inability to manage our health-care system on their own, we may be forced to close our offices in March every year. We’re also worried that there won’t be enough money to keep some doctors – in particular, specialists – gainfully employed, which is why we’re arranging a job fair for doctors this spring to help them find work in friendlier jurisdictions.
But won’t all this just hurt patients?

Let me be clear. Ontario’s doctors will never do anything to hurt our patients or put their health care at risk. That’s why we’re standing up and speaking out.
Rolling over and accepting what the Liberal government has done to our health-care system is the worst thing we could do.

Dr. Douglas Mark is interim president of DoctorsOntario, a group of more than 1,000 physicians who have broken away from the OMA.



Source: http://blogs.windsorstar.com/opinion/guest-column-ontarios-doctors-are-scapegoats-for-health-woes