preview

The Dispute Between The Ministry Of Health And Long Term Care And The Ontario Medical Services Agreement

Decent Essays

Purpose:
The purpose of this briefing note is to provide insight into the dispute between the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care and the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) in negotiating the physician services agreement.
Background:
The current issue is that physicians have now gone three years without a formal contract with the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care. An agreement has not been made due to opposing views on budget costs. The tentative physician services agreement was rejected on August 15th, 2016 by the OMA. 55% of the OMA members voted, and of the voting group, 63.1% voted against the physician services agreement. (CBC 2016) The rejected agreement included a physician’s services budget of $11.5 billion for the 2015-2016 …show more content…

The tentative deal will directly shape how the negotiation for cost overruns will be dealt with. The ability for the government to act unilaterally is removed to rebalance power. The new agreement prevents doctors from withdrawing any service from patients for the purpose of pressuring the government but they can still protest, petition and host letter-writing campaigns. The arbitration framework in the new agreement essentially erases last year’s rejected physician services agreement as neither associations nor the arbitrator can rely on the terms of an old proposal that was reject by 63.1% of the doctors that voted.
This matter is important to the Ministry of Health because it directly affects the allocated budget the Ministry must plan for in order to spend resources wisely. Currently, if the size of the problem were to be quantified, the Ministry should view it as medium-level issue. There has been progress since the ratification of the proposed framework on June 17th of this year, however, the biggest part will now be negotiating and creating an official agreement with the OMA.
Analysis:
The new framework is such that physicians now must share a certain level of responsibility with the government to help ensure that the health care system functions well. In the past, physicians were responsible for only their individual patients and

Get Access