This article originally appeared in the Winter 2021 issue of the Ontario Medical Review magazine.
The OMA’s leadership has supported the organization’s Manage objective through negotiations, media coverage and more.
The vast majority of 2017 PSA payments have been made to members. Negotiations staff are working to resolve other issues by the end of the year, including:
Mediation began with William Kaplan, mediator and chair of the Arbitration Board, in April. Mediation sessions were scheduled to continue through December, with arbitration dates expected to begin in January and continuing through March 2022.
The negotiations environment has been challenging and the pandemic has significantly hindered the Ministry of Health’s ability to fully engage in the process. There were also significant differences between the positions of the OMA and the government at the outset of negotiations. Progress has been made on a number of issues, but the two sides remain apart on others.
Negotiations have been particularly complex with the Negotiations Task Force leading COVID-specific negotiations, in addition to negotiations related to the Physician Services Agreement.
Since 2019, the OMA has focused on growing the OMA’s media footprint to build the association’s brand and reputation. By November 2021, we had increased media coverage to 20,500 mentions, up from 5,000 in 2019, significantly ahead of any other organization in the health-care space.
Staff did this by strengthening relationships with media outlets and positioning doctors as credible and trustworthy voices during the pandemic.
The OMA continues to lead media mentions among similar health-care associations. Since March 2020, the OMA has accumulated 36,000 media mentions. On social media, the OMA increased its followers by almost 4,000 on Twitter, 1,500 on Facebook and 1,000 on Instagram.
|
Year |
News releases |
Period |
President’s interviews |
|---|---|---|---|
|
2019 |
22 |
May 2019-May 2020 |
230+ |
|
2020 |
50 |
May 2020-June 2021 |
340 |
|
2021, to date |
104+ |
June 2021 to date |
180+ |
In December 2020, the OMA launched its Ask Ontario’s Doctors media briefings on topics in the news, which have attracted an average of 12-15 top-tier media outlets and generated widespread coverage, including a front-page story in the Globe and Mail about mental health during the pandemic and two nights of coverage on CBC’s The National in March.
These briefings laid the groundwork for the public release of the OMA’s health-care recommendations, Prescription for Ontario: Doctors’ 5-Point Plan for Better Health Care. The Prescription was released in late October, starting in Sudbury and ending at Queen’s Park.
Seventeen reporters from top-tier media outlets attended the OMA’s virtual news conference in Toronto and there was also significant social media coverage. Several elected officials acknowledged the OMA’s efforts, including Health Minister Christine Elliott, Opposition leader Andrea Horwath and Liberal leader Steven Del Duca.
The recommendations have been mentioned in the media 1,306 times, making it the OMA’s most successful proactive media effort ever. There were 100,000 impressions and more than 8,000 engagements on Twitter, with a reach of more than 150,000 and 5,100 engagements on Facebook and Instagram. Staff saw more than 500 tweets using the #Prescription4ON hashtag.
The governance transformation brought many changes to how the OMA is governed, including revised bylaws and a new governance structure. The next step is for the OMA to conduct a detailed review of its constituency groups, including sections, districts, branch societies, medical interest groups and fora. This review will ensure that all groups are aligned with the new governance requirements.
The OMA adopted an aggressive government relationship strategy in 2021 to ensure that doctors have a voice in health-care planning and transformation. This strategy included meeting with top government officials, provincial party leaders, MPPs, Ontario Health, mayors of major municipalities and federal party leaders.
In January, the OMA, along with other stakeholders, wrote a letter to Premier Doug Ford urging the government to introduce paid sick leave for Ontario workers to protect the province from increased COVID virus transmission and reduce the pandemic’s impact on marginalized populations. The OMA suggested that the government require all employers to provide a minimum of five annual paid sick days, and that the 2021 provincial budget fund and support employers to increase this to 10 annual sick days during a declared infectious disease emergency like COVID-19. OMA leaders met with Labour Minister Monte McNaughton’s office in April. The minister then introduced legislation, which was passed, requiring employers to provide employees with up to $200 of pay for up to three days if they miss work because of COVID-19. These benefits would transition to the federal program benefits, which Ontario would also double to provide up to $1,000 per week for up to four weeks for COVID-19-related sick leave. On Dec. 7, the provincial government extended its pandemic paid sick leave into 2022.
A focused effort encouraging local physicians to meet with their MPPs has elevated the voice of Ontario physicians in their local ridings and helped to educate MPPs on the OMA’s health-care platform. Members have met with 16 MPPs to date.
Other advocacy activities this year included a June meeting between CEO Allan O’Dette and Ontario Health CEO Matt Anderson to discuss Ontario Health Teams, COVID-19 recovery and vaccination, and an October panel with the Ontario Chamber of Commerce and Roche called Modernizing Ontario’s health-care system: The urgent need for digital health solutions.
Early this year, the OMA also completed a pre-budget submission focused on three priorities: community infrastructure stability, public health and long-term care. O’Dette joined a roundtable with health-care stakeholders that included the ministers of finance, health and long-term care to deliver the message on the organization’s priorities.
The Ontario Business Registry launched Oct. 19, allowing for simplified searches of general information about corporations and businesses in Ontario. However, the free search allowed for the public to access street address information of the registered head offices of corporations, including medicine professional corporations, which presented significant safety and security issues for physicians.
OMA staff moved quickly to address the issue with the Ministry of Government and Consumer Services. Effective Nov. 3, the free search of the registry only provides a corporation’s city and province, not its street address. The OMA also pursued legal recourse on the issue and an investigation has been opened by the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario.
The Physician Services Committee came to an agreement March 9 on the implementation of Post-Payment Accountability. The OMA was able to shape the policies and procedures of the PPA process to ensure procedural fairness for members and defined clear roles and responsibilities of government in this process. The OMA has also been working with the Ministry of Health to develop educational resources and materials to increase physician awareness and understanding of the new payment review process.
The OMA had seven peer-reviewed papers published in 2021, positioning the organization and Ontario’s doctors as health-care leaders.
Gender Pay Gap in Medicine was published in the American Medical Association’s JAMA Network Open and was an important milestone in advancing the voice of physicians on the international stage. Further research on this topic is underway, including the impacts of referrals on the gender pay gap.
Healing the Healers: System-Level Solutions to Physician Burnout, released in August, proposed five solutions to address burnout. The recommendations have been shared with stakeholders and an implementation plan is being developed.
The other five papers were:
The OMA held two OMATalks events in 2021 to showcase the thought leadership of Ontario’s doctors. This TED Talks-style speaker series, launched in 2019, makes ground-breaking discussions available to every Ontarian. These events are open to all members and shared on YouTube to reach a wide audience.
The first 2021 OMATalks, on March 27, was themed Planning for the Next Pandemic. The second, on Aug. 25, was on the impact of COVID-19 on mental health and addictions, with an expert panel discussing the effects on young children and returning to school, the rise in eating disorders, substance use and mental health concerns specific to seniors, ethnic minorities and Indigenous communities.
The OMA was active on several key fronts in 2021, including:
