Skip to main content

Money for favorites? Another McGuinty government policy drives up doctor incomes


Leftwords reported last week that some Ontario doctors got a big raise through the McGuinty government's 'wait times' strategy (a funding system that CUPE has long opposed as it opens the door to privatization and contracting out work from hospitals).

This brings to mind that ANOTHER McGuinty government initiative that has ALSO driven up doctor incomes.

The government has been pushing "Family Health Teams" (FHTs) since 2004. While doctors run the FHTs, the FHTs employ a range of health care employees and take on a broad range of health care services, some well beyond family doctor services, including services until now done in hospitals.  

 As usual, this government is trying to take more work out of our hospitals.

With last month's announcement of another 30 new Family Health Teams the total number of FHTs is now 200.  When these new FHTs become operational, 3,000,000 people will receive health services through them (an average of 15,000 patients per FHT).

So it is interesting to note that a study in the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this year indicated that doctors that joined Ontario Family Health Teams saw their net income increase about 40 per cent, from $180,000 in 2004 to $250,000 in 2009.

The study adds that an FHT "reduces overload for individual physicians.''

Both the increases achieved through wait times funding and by the creation of FHTs have occurred outside of the normal wage (or fee) increases bargained by the doctors.   That has made it hard to uncover these increases in doctor income.

OCHU reported earlier that government funding for doctors went up a whopping 57.6% between 2004/5 and 2009/10, so there may well be other ways that governmen has found to give money to the doctors on the QT. 

The McGuinty government has blessed business with billions in corporate tax cuts recently; so there is no doubt it can find ways to send money to the favored few.


dallan@cupe.ca
Labels:

Comments

  1. HughSeptember 29, 2011 at 1:09 AM

    This is the type of back door, secret deals the Mcguinty governement is great at. They have no qualms spending millions of taxpayer dollars, which most wouldn't mind if the patients were benefiting from better and improved care. In actual fact, they are getting the same low quality care based on visits and not results at a greater cost to every Ontarian.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

More spending on new hospitals and new beds? Nope

Hospital funding:  There is something off about the provincial government's Budget claims on hospital capital funding (funding to build and renovate hospital beds and facilities).    For what it is worth (which is not that much, given the long time frame the government cites), the province claims it will increase hospital capital spending over the next 10 years from $11 billion to $20 billion – or on average to about $2 billion per year.   But, this is just a notional increase from the previous announcement of future hospital capital spending.  Moreover, even if we did take this as a serious promise and not just a wisp of smoke, the government's own reports shows they have actually funded hospital infrastructure about $3 billion a year over the 2011/12-2015/16 period. So this “increase” is really a decrease from past actual spending. Even last year's (2016-17) hospital capital funding increase was reported in this Budget at $2.3 billion - i.e. about ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ford government fails to respond to 72% increase in COVID inpatient days, deepening the capacity crisis

COVID infections continue to drive up hospital costs and inpatient hospitalizations in Ontario. For the most recent fiscal year (April 1, 2022- March 31, 2023) hospital stays related to COVID cost $1.221 billion, according to new CIHI data.   This is about 4% of total hospital spending, creating a very significant new cost pressure beyond the usual pressures of population growth, aging, inflation, and rising utilization.   Costs for COVID related hospitalizations increased 22.2% in Ontario in 2022/23 from the previous fiscal year, rising from $999 million to $1.221 billion.  That rise is particularly notable as the OMICRON spike of late 2021 and early 2022 had passed by the the 2022/23 fiscal year.   The $222 million increase in COVID hospitalization costs came in the same year as the Ford government cut special COVID funding and, in fact, cut total hospital funding by $156 million.     In total, there were 60,653 COVID hospitalizations...
Post a Comment
Read more

The hospital crisis: No capacity, no plan, no end

While Canada has achieved universal public healthcare coverage, that does not mean conservative forces have given up trying to erode that coverage and expand corporate care where it does not currently exist. The battle has become particularly intense in Ontario under the Ford Progressive Conservative government, which is implementing serious cuts to the level of care and moving to bring in for-profit mini-hospitals. Inadequate Staffing.   Less and less of hospital spending is on staff.   Employee compensation as a share of hospital expenditures has consistently shrunk in Ontario. This is not some immutable law of hospital development.  It is in stark contrast with the rest of Canada, where compensation has become a larger share and now accounts for 67.1%. Hospitals in provinces other than Ontario now have 18 percent more staff per capita than hospitals in Ontario. Overall, if Ontario had the same staffing capacity as the other provinces and territories, there would be another...
Post a Comment
Read more