logo
Sign In
doctorIcon
Are you a doctor?

Are Ontario Doctors Being Overpaid?


Terese Mason Pierre
The medical doctor, or physician, is a well-respected occupation, so most of us don’t feel it’s too much of an inequality if doctors are paid a little more than the rest of us. They save lives, we think. They have stressful jobs, train for years—they deserve it. While that’s a reasonable position to hold, one can still ask: are doctors being overpaid? Are they putting in less work hours, seeing less patients, with no change in their salaries? Has their well-respected position in society made them entitled and greedy? Or do they have a case?

doctors dollars Many media explore this controversial subject. The Globe and Mail suggests that the main reason Ontario doctors’ salaries have risen is because of the increasing cost of technological services that the healthcare system provides (e.g.: MRIs), while the actual amount of services per person remains the same. Some physician organizations (e.g.: CPSO) claim that the government is underfunding the system, so doctors need to charge more as a result [1].

The average Canadian doctor earns $387,000 annually—Ontario and Alberta have the highest physician incomes in the country, with Ontario at $470,000 [2], and that’s not even delving into the inequalities within medical specialities [3]. Doctors’ salaries make up about 25% of health spending and 10% of the provincial budget [4].

Physicians are still engaged in a wage dispute with the province. More cuts had been made last September 2015, in the form of the OMA’s (Ontario Medical Association) rejection of a three-year deal that offered to increase the funds available to doctors’ salaries, saying there wasn’t enough money [5].

How are doctors reacting? Many are taking to social media and writing open letters to express their anger. The hash tags #CareNotCuts, #oncall4ON and #CodeBlue were supposed to emphasize that cuts in physician fees will harm patient care, and aimed to show that doctors are dedicated and hard-working. However, since these focus on too much on gross billings (cost of service with no reduction), which are enormous compared to other industries’, these doctors come off as whiny and insincere [6].

rich doctor Some doctors are threatening another “brain drain”—a period in the 1990’s when many of Canada’s doctors left for the U.S. because of fee battles—and that it will affect the quality of healthcare for patients. Other governmental health officials claim these threats are baseless, calling it fear mongering, saying that even with fee cuts, doctors will remain the highest paid workers [7].

But with the high esteem we regard doctors with, it’s easy to forget that they are people, too, with other interests besides buying expensive Lamborghinis. With the most recent round of cuts, nuclear medicine specialists, for example, will see their salaries drop by 17%, which could endanger their upkeep of private practices, causing them to lay off staff [8]. In some cases, some doctors who have been training for over a decade, and accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, find it unfair to have only recently gotten a staff position and faced with cut pay [9].

So, what can be done about this? Either the province needs to restrict growth in the amount of services provided, which potentially harms patients, or take a direct approach with fees, which potentially harms healthcare professionals [10]. No matter what you think of doctors, it’s undeniable that there will be consequences if this dispute persists.
Terese Mason Pierre March 27, 2016
Share

Sign up to leave comment
Categories
All Articles
Myth vs Facts
Health and Wellness
Toronto
Ontario
Hamilton
Ottawa
London
Alberta
Edmonton
Calgary
Contribute to VisitDoctor.ca
Send
Readers' Picks
Medical Tests New Immigrants to Canada Should Be Aware Of
Haadi Hafeez
Moving to a new country can be a long and arduous ordeal; application processes, background checks, and medical tests...
Natural VS Conventional Medication
Haadi Hafeez
In an ideal world people would live long lives, never having to deal with illness or disease. We would eat naturally...
Canadian View on Physician-Assisted Death
Vivian L.
Today's Canadians want control over all aspects of their own lives, including the choice of whether to live or die....
Physics Meets Medicine
Zahra Abdi
I once saw a post that distinguished the complex fields of biology and physics, with a simple (and slightly comical)...
Studies in Shut-Eye: How Much Sleep is Enough
Terese Mason Pierre
How much sleep do you really need? And why do some people sleep less than others? Can you get just a few hours of sleep...
The Case of OJ vs. the Orange; The Jury Trial
Yoshith Perera
Your honor... Today this glass of orange juice or OJ you see before you is on trial for causing several humans to...