Latest news with #KimberlyMoran
CTV News
6 days ago
- Health
- CTV News
Ontario's family doctors could soon have a new compensation system. Here is how it will work
Ontario family doctors could soon be subject to a new compensation system as part of the province's efforts to incentivize physicians to work as general practitioners. Ontario Medical Association CEO Kimberly Moran tells CTV News that negotiations on the new system are ongoing but that she believes a deal can be reached within months. She said that while the matter is still under an arbitration board's review an agreement has already been reached with the Ontario government on 'most of the elements.' The focus of the new system would be to pay doctors for the time they spend doing administration, as well as the time they spend providing medical care, Moran says. Right now, family doctors are not compensated for the time they spend working on administration or with specialists on behalf of their patients. Instead, doctors operate under both a fee-for-service model, in which they are reimbursed under the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) for every service they provide a patient and an enrollment system, in which they are paid a set amount per patient, regardless of how many times they see them. 'What this incentivized compensation model does is that it recognizes the work that's done by doctors that they have talked about as very challenging and that is a lot of critical administration,' Moran said of the new proposed model. 'It directly compensates that for them, so for example if you need referral to a specialization or if the family doctor needs to talk to your specialist about something, like none of that time is compensated. But now its going to be, so that's great.' Ontario has long had a shortage of family doctors. The provincial government has pledged to make sure that every Ontarian has a family doctor by 2029 and Moran said she is hopeful the new system will convince more physicians to enter family medicine. The OMA represents 31,500 practicing physicians in Ontario. 'The hope is that it will attract new physicians to the field, keep those who are practicing now and entice other doctors who have moved away from that kind of medicine back to practice medicine there,' she said. Ontario is short on doctors of all sorts but Moran emphasized the importance of family doctors right now. Right now, 2.5 million Ontarians are without a family doctor. 'What we wanted to do with this model was incentivize family doctors, those who have chosen family medicine,' she said. 'To have improved compensation is one of the ways we recruit and retain family doctors. It is going to be important over the next decade to make sure we have enough doctors through all of our specialties. But for this time, right now, where attachment to a family doctor is so critical, we wanted to focus here.' Moran said that under the existing payment system doctors were not compensated for the total time they spent with a patient who may come in 'with four, five, six different things to do.' She said that the new system 'means that if the doctor has to spend 45 minutes with a person who has lots of complexity, its going to be compensated properly.' Minister of Health and Deputy Premier Sylvia Jones was asked about the ongoing negotiations during an unrelated press conference on Wednesday but declined to comment, only offering that there were 'very positive movements' and that progress was being made. 'So, as we expand primary care clinicians, opportunities in communities, we want to make sure that those physicians, those clinicians, those nurse practitioners are well supported and we're doing that work with the OMA. I can tell you to date it has been very positive,' she said.
Hamilton Spectator
26-04-2025
- Health
- Hamilton Spectator
Ontario expands pension plan to self-employed doctors previously excluded
It's a shot in the arm for doctors at a time when Ontario is scrambling to ease a shortage that has left 2.5 million people without a family physician. Since January, doctors with their own practices have been able to join the same pension plan enjoyed by colleagues who work in hospitals — and bring their receptionists, nurses and any other staff along for the ride to retirement. Hundreds of self-employed physicians have expressed interest and more than 75 have taken steps to become part of the $123 billion Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan, also known by its acronym pronounced 'hoop.' While the opening wasn't created with the troublesome doctor shortage in mind, it can't hurt, says a senior executive. 'If the ability to access the defined-benefit pension like HOOPP is the reason for a physician to set up shop in or stay in Ontario, that's fantastic,' says Rachel Arbour, a lawyer and head of plan benefits, design and policy. 'But we're here to provide really good pensions and retirement for health-care workers, and this is one of the reasons why we looked at growing our plan to physicians,' she adds. 'We believe we play an important role in recruitment and retention. Health-care employers in our province can say to their staff 'we can offer you a great pension.'' The plan boasted a solid 9.7 per cent gain on global investments last year on behalf of 475,000 members and retirees in health care across the province. Opening the pension plan to self-employed physicians who have established their own medicine professional corporations and agree to pay a membership fee to the Ontario Hospital Association is the result of years of work and urging from within the health-care sector, including the Ontario Medical Association. The change to include self-employed doctors involved getting approval from Ontario's pension regulator and the Canada Revenue Agency. The OMA offers a group retirement savings plan to its members — who include 31,500 practicing physicians — but recognizes that many would also like to have a traditional pension plan with defined benefits. 'It has a good track record,' says Kimberly Moran, a chartered accountant and the OMA's chief executive officer, of the HOOPP pension. While the shortage of an estimated 3,500 family doctors has many root causes, such as heavy workloads, long days and administrative paperwork , Moran notes the new pension offering provides 'a little bit of help.' Recognizing it was politically vulnerable because of the doctor shortage , Premier Doug Ford's Progressive Conservatives pledged $1.4 billion in new spending on the eve of Ontario's Feb. 27 election campaign for expanded primary health-care teams, with Health Minister Sylvia Jones acknowledging 'there's no doubt people have been waiting a long time, too long, frankly, to get connected to a family-care practitioner in their community.' Ford has also added more spaces in medical schools and a new medical school is opening at Toronto Metropolitan University in Brampton next fall, but will take years to produce fully trained doctors. The OMA said 8,600 physicians have retired or left their practices since 2018, meaning two doctors are lost for every three new ones added to the health-care system. As many jurisdictions around the world compete with each other for med school graduates, more than 750 doctors have reached out to a HOOPP hotline about the pension plan after reading full details posted on the organization's website. They are encouraged to discuss the prospect of joining with their own financial advisors. 'Every doctor is going to have a slightly different set of circumstances they're going to have to work through and make sure that it makes sense for them,' says Moran. Aside from paying a membership fee to the Ontario Hospital Association, which would not reveal the dollar value but said the cost is 'modest' for doctors, physicians joining the plan make contributions both as the employer and the employee, based on income. Those contributions are tax-deductible. 'It's about half-and-half in terms of doctors who are sole practitioners and those who have staff with them,' Arbour says. 'We would love the family physicians, their nurses, the receptionist, the whole bucket of people supporting that practice to come into our plan. The longer you're in our plan, the bigger your pension income will be upon retirement.'
