- 05 Oct 2006 04:24
#992178
It's difficult competing against the USA...
Med Broadcast
Med Broadcast
Government defends 56 per cent jump in doctors earning over $476,000 a year
Oct. 04, 2006
Provided by: Canadian Press
Written by: KEITH LESLIE
TORONTO (CP) - The Ontario government allowed the number of doctors earning more than $476,000 annually to jump 56 per cent last year - some averaging salaries upwards of $718,000 - in order to ease the pressure of a shortage of physicians, Health Minister George Smitherman said Wednesday.
The salary cap was lifted because 1.2 million Ontario residents don't have a doctor, and the province wanted to encourage existing doctors to see more patients, Smitherman said.
Some 1,450 doctors in Ontario earned more than last year's cap of $466,000, while salaries in specific areas targeted with extra funding to reduce wait times soared even higher, Health Ministry statistics show. Nearly 1,000 Ontario doctors pulled in over $627,000 last year.
"I rather suspect that if we're creating millionaire doctors, it's because they've seen a heck of a lot of patients," Smitherman said before a provincial cabinet meeting.
"There are too few doctors, and of course we want to get as much productivity as we can out of those that we have, and financial incentive is the very best way known to do that."
Figures for top physician earners show 224 family doctors in Ontario earned an average of $627,000 last year, while 374 diagnostic radiologists averaged $652,000.
The top earners overall were ophthalmologists, 191 of whom averaged over $718,000 in earnings, followed by cardiologists, who averaged $687,000 last year.
Smitherman said the statistics indicate an 11 per cent increase in doctor productivity since the salary cap was lifted.
Premier Dalton McGuinty also defended the increases.
"We had heard time and time again that the (salary) cap was suppressing the numbers of services, surgeries, procedures that we could provide," he said.
"That's one of the reasons we've been able to enjoy the successes we have in getting wait times down."
McGuinty also said Wednesday that he knows the province will have to give even more money to emergency room doctors - who already average $170 an hour - because of severe staffing problems, especially in the Kitchener area, 100 kilometres west of Toronto.
"We have a real issue when it comes to pay packages for emergency room doctors, and we're taking a look at that," he told the legislature.
The province allowed a Cambridge hospital to hire a private company last week to run its emergency room, while a hospital in nearby Kitchener came very close to closing its emergency room doors because of a shortage of doctors.
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