Health care providers in the Kenora area have developed a new model for compensating physicians.
It’s called a Rural Generalist model and would allow doctors to work on First Nations, general practice, hospitals and the emergency room.
Dr. Jilly Retson says they’ve been negotiating with the Ministry of Health for the past two years, to approve this model.
She is disappointed the local doctors and health care agencies have had no success yet.
“The only area that seems to be pending is the emergency piece,” Retson told a recent press conference.
“We feel we need to carve out the emergency funding from the provincial agreements, and place that and embed that within the Rural Generalist model so that we can create that fine balance across the board between the various service areas.”
Dr.Retson says the Rural Generalist model would allow physicians to work in a number of different settings.
“When it’s siloed off, what you start to do you have physician groups move between emergency or go back to primary care and one area suffers or goes into crisis at the expense of the other. So, our model is different in that we’re creating a fine balance between all these service areas.”
Retson says the Rural Generalist model would help address the doctor shortage in the region and also ensure physicians would have at least have compensation parity with their counterparts in Manitoba.
(File photo)
