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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1994-06-15, Page 6PAGE 6. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15,1994. Emergency service not new issue, says Grier The following is a verbatim transcript of an interview between Ontario Health Minister Ruth Grier and Signal-Star Editor, David Greenberg on the occasion of the inaugural meeting of the Huron/Perth District Health Council, in Seaforth, GREENBERG: Emergency service is a big issue around here; at least one hospital has lost - or almost lost it. What is the government planning to do about it? GRIER: It's not a new issue. For a long time small hospitals have had to top up the salaries of physicians from their budgets, and I think the solution is finding a different way of compensating physicians. The fee-for-service system, especially on emergency where there may be only one or two patients in a night, doesn't make it worth their while to work, and that's why they haven't been willing to staff emergency rooms. The Ontario Medical Association could change the schedule of benefits in order to compensate them more appropriately for emergency hours. We want to sit down and negotiate a way of paying them, not on the basis of the number of patients seen, but on a salary basis. GREENBERG: For emergencies only? GRIER: For everything, so then they could schedule themselves, and not be dependent on the fee for service for that. GREENBERG: Has the OMA or anybody responded to the notion of salary? GRIER: Well, as part of our agreement with the OMA, we established a committee with the OMA and the Ontario Hospital Association last November to talk about this. In February the OMA pulled out. I'm delighted now, since the end of May they have now indicated a willingness to come back and continue discussions on this issue. GREENBERG: Is the amount of salary a problem? GRIER: I don't think we ever got to that point. We have an agreement with the physicians for $3.8 billion that we will pay the province's 20 000 physicians. Within that, we have to re-allocate within the OHIP billings for the physicians in rural or remote areas and I think we can do that. GREENBERG: Do you Volunteers to clean manse Continued from page 3 Camp Menesetung. Clean up at the manse will be next week so volunteers are needed. Melanie Bearss gave a report on the weekend at Westminister which she really enjoyed. Graduation dinner is Monday, June 27 and on Wednesday, June 29 the Huntley family will arrive. There will be a bake sale Thursday and Friday, Sept. 8 and 9 and a used clothing sale Oct. 14 & 15. Next meeting will be Sept. 15 at 2 p.m. A delicious lunch was prepared by Janet Laurie, Ollie Craig, Myrtle Vodden and Bonnie Shannon. • Over 100 Canadians die each year from bike injuries. Children aged 5 to 14 account for one third of these deaths. last week. recognize a difference between a big city doctor and a rural doctor and their different emergency requirements? GRIER: The OMA could do that if they wanted to - today. That's the schedule of benefits. Rural doctors have been asking them to do that for a while and the OMA hasn't agreed. So now we have the OMA and the hospitals all sitting down to try and work out a way. It's not a problem I can wave a magic wand and solve, or that the OMA can or that the hospital can. It has to be the kind of co-operative effort that we see here with a DHC (District Health Council). GREENBERG: What if the doctors just outright close emergency rooms down. Are you prepared to let them close? GRIER: I cannot stop a doctor from deciding where he will practice. And I think that if a doctor has privileges at a hospital, then the hospital and the physician have to work out an arrangement where there is coverage for emergency room service. GREENBERG: Do you think the hospital should be able to deny privileges to a doctor who does not stand emergency room service? GRIER: I think they should certainly talk very seriously to doctors who have privileges about responsibilities that go with those privileges. GREENBERG: But the Ministry does not appear to be interested in getting into the fight, elbows up. GRIER: Well, the Ministry just hires the doctors. They are independent practitioners, they are part of a self-regulating profession. They cannot, under their oath, deny emergency service to anybody. I believe that because they have the privilege of being self­ regulating and of having the use of the publicly funded hospitals of this province, with that goes responsibilities and we're simply talking to them about that. It's only since 1991 that there has ever been a formal agreement between the Ministry and doctors. Our government signed that and we're taking our responsibilities COALITION FOR HURON COUNTY MEETING June 23rd, 1994 8:30 am to 12:00 pm Hensall Community Centre • Auditorium tr Groups and Businesses interested in community and labour market issues are invited to attend. Co-sponsored bp jobsOntario Training and the Employment Training Committee of Huron Community Services Network. very seriously. GREENBERG: I've heard that the Ministry would like to see 3,000 to 5,000 family physicians leave the province and then replace them with nurse practitioners... GRIER: I think that all health planners, and it's not just in Ontario, as provinces across the country have looked at the future, have realized that we have to for the first time, get into some human resource planning. We have too many general practitioners in some parts of the province who are depending on the population, such as the Toronto area; we have too few in Huron and Perth and parts of northern Ontario and parts of downtown Toronto; we have too few physicians servicing clients with AIDS for example. So we've never had a mechanism for looking at how to appropriately distribute physicians. So we believe that we have to have some way of doing that and not just allowing everybody to just come in and set up practice where they want to set; which is what's happened in the past. And I also think, and the Regulated Health Professions Act acknowledges the important role that other professionals have in some parts of the province. A team approach with nurse practitioners working with physicians to provide coverage, works. It's proven to work in some areas. And I think there is room there to look at what needs do we really have to meet in our community and how best can we meet them. GREENBERG: I'm a little puzzled trying to understand the financing of the midwife program. As I understand it, a family doctor gets around $300 for a delivery and midwives get somewhere from $1,200 to $2,000. Flow does that save money? GREER: I don't know where that figure comes from. Midwives are on salary. Midwives deal with a woman from the moment she discovers she is pregnant, through pregnancy, through birth and for six weeks afterwards. GREENBERG: Don't family doctors do that as well? GRIER: Not in the same kind of intensity and relationship that a midwife has. A midwife is on call around the clock all the time, and during the period before a birth is available there. GREENBERG: Aren't doctors as well? GRIER: A lot of general practitioners don't attend births anymore and won't deal with pregnant women. And specialists and obstetricians do. But we're talking about a very different kind of care. We're talking about care for’ the 80 per cent of women who are having an entirely normal birth and don't need a medical intervention. GREENBERG: Do you think it will save money in the long run? GRIER: It wasn't begun to save money. And we had midwives in this country years ago, before we had doctors. Births became very medicalized over the past 50 or 60 years and about 10 or 15 years ago women began to say, we want a choice. We want a choice in the kind of care we get if we're having a normal delivery, and we want a choice in not having it in a sterile medical setting. We want a birthing centre. It doesn't mean we don't need the obstetricians and the gynecologists and their incredible skills for those births where they're required and we have to compensate them for that. GREENBERG: Sounds like it's just the GP/obstelrician you are trying to get rid of. GRIER: I'm not trying to get rid of anybody. I'm trying to give women a choice, which is what ENTER THE RUTABAGA PARADE .O on Saturday, June 25 at 11 a.m. (Just complete this form and drop it off at The Citizen office to register) • \ • Name....................................................................................... Club/Business........................................................................ Address................................................................................... Telephone............................................................................... Type of Entry............................................................ lit Parade Categories: •• Best overall • Best Comedy • Best use of a Rutabaga • Best Imagination • Best Individual • Best Business -• Best Agricultural • Best Municipal •' ■ B • Best Church • Best School • Best Youth (16 - 25) • And Best Bicycle Judging takes place at 10 a.m. - before the Parade. Lots of Prizes Reserve a table at our Craft Show and Sale, Saturday, June 25 ■ ■at the Blyth Arena For more information please call Sheron Stadelmann 523-9204 or Michelle Richmond 523-9751. ■ ■ ■■■■/Remember to enter our •, ■ Baking Contest. Saturday, June 25 Judging at 10 a.m. Entry forms available at Scrimgeour's Food Market & The Green Gallery they have demanded. In my own family, one of many grandchildren was born at home with midwives and another needed the most high tech expertise that a teaching hospital in Toronto could provide. Every birth is different. The vast majority of them are normal events in a woman’s life. And women are saying I want to keep it normal with my family around me and I don't want the kind of medical intervention that my mother had. CALLFOR COUNTRY KABLE TODAY! MORE MOVIES! MORE SPORTS! MORE DRAMA! MORE MUSIC! UP TO 100 FREE CHANNELS Allen Stubbs ... First In Entertainment 296-5565