The Ontario Medical Association represents over 43,000 physicians, medical students and retired physicians in Canada’s most populous province. In a survey of some 4,800 family doctors and specialists in Ontario who responded to an OMA survey earlier this month, half had said they may have to close their clinics over lack of payments from provincial government for treatments.
Most doctors are not on a salary. Clinics register visits and services and the doctors supbmit the information ‘billing’ the province for reimbursement from the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP). As most doctors operate as independant small businesses, the OHIP payment is used to pay for staff, rent, upkeep, equipment leases etc.
But as patient visits have stopped with non-essential treatments cancelled due to the COVId-19 situation, so to have OHIP billings leaving little or no money coming in.
Ontario Medical Association president Dr. Sohail Gandhi is concerned about the future of medical care for Ontario after an OMA survey found many expecting to close their offices for uop to three month, and over 9 per cent said they may close permanently (OMA)
While some have resorted to ‘tele-medicine’, they likely won’t see any payments until June or July..
Dr. Nili Kaplan-Myrth has switched the vast majority of her central Ottawa office over to telemedicine, in part due to the lack of personal protective equipment. Quoted by the CBC she said, “My colleagues in my family health group and other family doctors across Ontario are scared because we don’t know how we can continue to provide the quality care that we are so committed to and survive financially”.
Responses to an Ontario Medical Association ‘Practice Impact Survey” show about half of the doctors (49.7%) have already laid off staff and another 20 per cent anticipate more layoffs likely this month. Again, almost half (48.7%) say they’ll likely have to close their clinics this month for up to three months (69.7%).
Over nine per cent anticipate permanent closure.
The OMA press release says there are already some 800,000 in the province with no family doctor, and closures will add another 900,000 to that figure.
This could leave citizens without access to preventative care, or diagnostic procedures
Dr. Sohail Gandhi, President of the Ontario Medical Association. “The real risk here is that many will become sick or sicker, and have to go to the Emergency Room or be admitted to hospital. Their health can also be negatively impacted for the long term. Our health-care infrastructure is also a major part of Ontario’s economy, and we can’t recover from this pandemic without it. I am calling on the government to do the right thing, and fund health-care infrastructure.”
The OMA statement says many doctors may not qualify for government COVID-19 assistance programmes such as the 75 per cent wage subsidy which is geared to employees, The statement says doctors will also often not qualify for recently created Canadian Emergency Response Benefit and the Canadian Emergency Business Account.
Dr Gandhi added, that some doctors and clinics, ” may unfortunately go bankrupt and have to close their doors forever, as is happening to countless other types of small businesses across Ontario. I worry about what will happen when this first wave of COVID-19 is over and a big chunk of our health-care system just won’t be there.”
As the restrictions continue over the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more sectors of the economy are finding themselves in increasingly dire straits.
Although the survey was for Ontario doctors, other provincial health care systems operate in a similar manner which could mean that clinics and doctors across the country are facing the same concerns.
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