Ontario Medical Association names new president
Posted May 8, 2017 5:28 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Ontario Medical Association has named a new president.
Dr. Shawn Whatley will represent the province’s 29,000 practising physicians.
The OMA has been without an agreement with the province for more than three years.
In February, Premier Kathleen Wynne committed to entering binding arbitration.
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The Liberal government angered doctors in 2015 by imposing fee cuts for some services, and had previously threatened to act on its own again if it couldn’t reach an agreement with the OMA.
Doctors roundly voted down a proposal last summer that would have increased the approximately $12-billion physician services budget by more than $1 billion but set out $200 million in certain fees.
The OMA has dealt with internal turmoil since then, with some doctors upset that not only had the association endorsed that deal, it had been in talks with the government without doctors’ knowledge.
Doctors dismissed another government proposal last year, saying it was just a re-hash of the previous offer, and have made vague threats of job action since then.
