Family doctors have been offered significant raise under the province’s new compensation model to ameliorate the healthcare crisis in British Columbia. The government said that family doctors who work full-time would be paid about $385,000 a year. The former rate was $250,000.
At the moment, family doctors are paid through a fee-for-service model and the government said the new plan will also pay them for hours worked, administrative costs, and the number and complexity of patients.
Dr. Ramneek Dosanjh, president of Doctors of BC, said the deal represents a “seismic shift” in the way family medicine is practiced in the province.
“It is a model unique in Canada bringing together the best of a range of payment models. It addresses rising business costs, it recognizes the value physicians provide when delivering longitudinal care and it will compensate us for the time spent on evening and weekend administrative burdens,” she said.
“We’re listening to the concerns of many of our family doctors who have left practice or have been contemplating leaving.”
The new payment regime will cost the B.C. government $708 million over a period of three years, representing overall increases to the total base budget between three and 5.5 per cent each year.
Health Minister Adrian Dix said the payment model the province’s health-care system, even though the government has no specific estimate of what impact it will have in terms of the number of people who will get a family doctor, or the number of doctors recruited as a result.
“It’s going to have a very, very positive effect. We can’t be exact,” he said, adding that it’s not a one-step solution but is part of a broader overhaul of health services.
The roster system will give the government better information about who has care and who needs it, he said.
The new model aims to close the pay gap between family doctors and hospitalists, who are paid close to $300,000 a year to work in hospitals and have the same training but not the overhead costs.
Full-service family doctors are those who work in communities to provide ongoing primary-care services to their patients.
“Rising costs, pandemic-related pressures and staffing shortages required action for doctors on several fronts.”
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