A group of specialists trying to break away from the Ontario Medical Association is being called out by peers who charge that the discord is all about money.“They don’t want to be the group that has to give up (some money) for other groups to increase their earnings,” general surgeon Dr. Nancy Baxter said in an interview Tuesday.“Until the OMA started talking more about relativity, you didn’t hear about these specialty organizations wanting to break away,” continued Baxter, one of many doctors who has gone public with criticisms — many of them on social media — of a referendum the breakaway specialists held last week.“Relativity” refers to big pay gaps between different medical specialties. The OMA, which represents Ontario’s 31,000 practising physicians in contract negotiations with the provincial government, has struggled recently to develop a recommendation on the issue for an arbitration panel charged with resolving a four-year-old contract dispute.The stakes in the ongoing dispute are high. The arbitration panel must first determine how much extra money should be added to the physician services budget, which currently stands at more than $12 billion or 10 per cent of the entire provincial budget. The panel must then determine how the extra money should be divvied up between different specialties. Radiologist Dr. David Jacobs, who is spearheading the breakaway efforts, served as an OMA board member until late September when he resigned and announced the need to form a separate specialist group. In an open letter critical of the OMA, Jacobs noted it was unable to reach a negotiated settlement with the new Ford government and charged its bureaucracy has grown while its accountability has waned.He said 24 specialty sections recognized by the OMA (there are 49) had shown interest in forming a separate group, writing that they should be able to freely choose who represents them. He called for one b ...
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