Doctors' contract talks with province resume after break during election

Doctors and the Newfoundland and Labrador government are back at the bargaining table, trying to hammer out a new contract.

Talks started before Christmas but sputtered to a stop during the extended provincial electionearlier this year. The memorandum of agreementthatdoctors had with the province wasnegotiated in 2013 and expired in 2017, but will remain in effect until a new agreement is reached.

"We want to get this negotiation done with government so we can move on with trying to improve health care here in the province," said Dr. Lynette Powell, president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Medical Association.

In a letter written to doctors on earlier this month, Powell said they need to improve recruitment, deal with uncompetitive remuneration and find permanent solutions to their problems.

Powell said there is a shortage of family doctors and in some specialities, such as internal medicine, pathology, cardiac surgery and neurology. She said the province needs to create an environment where it's easier to recruit and retain doctors, since about 90,000 people are without a family doctor.

"Behind each one of those numbers is a person who really has no access to the health-care system," she said.

"The only way for us to really start looking at helping those patients get back into the system in a meaningful way is to change how family doctors work."

Powell said with the province's aging population, many family doctors are seeing patients with increasingly complex health-care needs. She says thatmakes it even more difficult to attract young doctors, because she said many new graduates go to work in hospitals or emergency departments.

"We really want to see a model with primary health-care teams and family physicians in those teams, and so that's going to mean a change in how family doctors are compensated," she said.

But Powell said it's hard to give a ballpark figure when it comes to increasing doctors'compensation, since some operate on a fee-for-service basis while others are salaried.

Without competitive compensation, she said, doctors will leave the province for greener pastures.

"Physicians work in the national labour force and are very mobile. And if we can't be competitive, even with our Atlantic Canadian counterparts, it's very difficult for us to keep people here."

Last week Moya Greene, chair of the premier's economic recovery team, released The Big Reset, a report with suggestions to repair the province's fiscal challenges. It stated the province has the highest per capita health-care spending with the poorest health outcomes, and recommended a 25 per cent reduction to operating grants for health authorities, and reducing the province's four health authorities to one.

Powell says doctors aren't "tone deaf" to the province's financial woes.

"We realize that we all have to work together in the health-care system to look for ways to create efficiencies. Per capita payments to physicians areinNewfoundland and Labrador among the lowest in the country," said Powell, who saysthe province needs to look in other areasof the health system, like infrastructure,for overspending.

"We have communities with virtually no service now on numerous parts of the island. There's no locums, there's no doctors to fill in. It's really a perfect storm."

In a statement to CBC News, the Department of Health and Community Services said it valuesdoctors and wants a healthy and safe workplace for them and all health-care professionals.

"As with any negotiations, we will not be negotiating in public. We look forward to reaching an agreement to better support doctors and their patients," the statement says.

Powell said both sides will meet again next week.

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