Dear colleagues:

Tomorrow, the OMA and Ministry of Health will release the Phase 1 recommendations of the Appropriateness Working Group (AWG). You will remember that the formation of the AWG was ordered by Arbitrator and is binding on both the OMA and the MOH.

As you know, the AWG is tasked with making recommendations to improve the quality of patient care by reducing the provision of medically unnecessary or inappropriate care, without compromising patient access to medically necessary services. Under the terms of the AWG imposed by the Arbitrator, fees can be delisted, and the required elements for billing them can be changed, but the fees themselves cannot be altered.

We will be sending you an update with all the details, including links to documents that explain each recommendation, the related OHIP Schedule of Benefits changes and implementation details.

As promised, none of these changes are retroactive, all will take effect officially on October 1, 2019.

The AWG co-chairs Dr. Paul Tenenbein (OMA) and Dr. Joshua Tepper (MOH) will provide a technical briefing to the media tomorrow afternoon. We’ll post the media documents online along with the various member-specific details.

I want to thank the AWG on behalf of the OMA for all of their hard work on this challenging topic.

Dr. Bette Stephenson Remembered

As some of you have heard, Dr. Bette Stephenson passed yesterday at the age of 95. Dr. Stephenson was truly an inspiration. She was the first female President of the Ontario Medical Association. She was also the first female President of the Canadian Medical Association. She then was a founding member of the College of General Practice of Canada (which has since become the College of Family Physicians of Canada). Not satisfied with this, she went on to have a successful 12-year career in politics during which she held many cabinet positions and was Ontario’s first female deputy Premier.

I briefly met Dr. Stephenson when she was Education minister and I was elected to a Student Provincial Parliament. It was clear she had a genuine warmth and compassion about her. Her passion for educating the younger generation was evident and it’s a testament to her personality that I’m still inspired by the meeting all these decades later.

On behalf of all Ontario Physicians, I wish to express our sincerest condolences to her family.