To All Ontario Family Physicians                                  September 25, 2006.

ATTENTION FAMILY DOCTORS

Our Family Practice Future Is At Risk!

All is not well in family practice. It is encouraging to see that the OMA appears to be more responsive and has managed to negotiate more funding for family practice. However, many aspects of care remain chronically underfunded, and there are more troubling changes planned for the near future as part of the government's health care agenda. Our concern is that these changes will remain unnoticed by physicians until such time as they will have already become firmly entrenched, to the detriment of physicians.

We believe that the following critical matters have the potential to seriously affect you and your practice. We have all witnessed how complacency can be seed of both personal and professional destruction.

•  Medical Review Committee (MRC) - The Ontario Government continues to disregard doctors' basic civil rights to due process and clear rules for billing audits. Specifically, are they reneging on the promise to implement the Cory Report on audits, while starting to threaten doctors directly via Bill 8? We fear that all the gains made with the dismantling of the MRC may soon be lost, and the draconian billing audits of the near past may reappear.

 

•  The government is attempting to make doctors with hospital privileges responsible for wait times.

“…physicians generate most of a hospital's costs….” and “Clear accountability levers must be established between hospitals and their medical staff” – Assistant Deputy Minister Hugh MacLeod (August 31, 2006 - see our website for the complete Bulletin)

But who created the wait times in the first place? Why blame those who had nothing to do with creating the doctor shortages and resource shortfalls responsible for the wait-time crisis? Indeed, if you do try to shorten the wait time for your own patients, you and the patient may each be fined $10,000 under Bill 8 for jumping the queue.

 

•  The government may be planning legislation to allow prescribing privileges to pharmacists as has been enacted in Alberta, and to hand most family-doctor functions over to Nurse Practitioners. They seem to have abandoned a long-term plan to fixing the doctor shortage that previous governments created, and are satisfied to hand over medical care to those with lesser training and qualifications.

 

•  The government is offering an IT funding lottery system for physicians that will not come close to providing to all physicians (regardless of practice type) the means to provide EMR-assisted care for the patients of Ontario. This approach will effectively force some doctors to invest their own money for their IT needs.

What should you do about this? Sit back and watch our healthcare system evolve according to the will of government and healthcare policy-making bureaucrats? Or, take a stand for what you know is best for family practice and our patients by becoming more vocal and supporting organizations like the COFP?

Over the past 10 years, the COFP has…

•  Successfully moved the OMA into a somewhat more active stance (the OMA has now acknowledged our contribution for the record);

•  Been instrumental in stopping the MRC from persecuting doctors with draconian and unconstitutional billing audits;

•  Defended the fee-for-service option for family practice in the past; and

•  Helped to defeat an initial inadequate fee deal and pressured for a better, although far from satisfactory, one.

However, we cannot continue our work without your immediate voluntary financial support. We do not have a compulsory fee system like the OMA with its compulsory dues (“Rand”), or the CPSO with its registration fees. We ask for much less than other organizations, and do provide more bang for the buck.

Between contracts, our membership support declines; it is human nature to let one's attention wander in times of perceived calm.

Despite weathering many storms, the COFP may not be present in the foreseeable future to fight these and other issues, as we get ready for the next contract cycle. We are volunteers, doctors just like you with payrolls to meet while caring for our patients. We are on the front lines of medicine dealing with the day-to-day realities of practice. We understand your problems because they are our problems. But we simply cannot operate without funds – even shoestring ones.

If you haven't already done so this year, then y ou owe it to yourselves to support the COFP by paying our small membership fee or even by making a contribution. Not doing so will result in you losing a key advocate of your interests, leaving you at the mercy of the government, the CPSO, the OCFP, while relying on the OMA to protect you.

Please help us to forge a brighter future for family practice in Ontario and for your own individual careers.

Sincerely,

Douglas Mark MD, President

and the Board of the Coalition of Family Physicians of Ontario

*********Click here to visit the COFP's Membership Page***********

Join, renew, give feedback, make political action & legal challenge contributions online at www.cofp.com